I 
ANNEX 


S 
066 

358 


FOR    VIRGINIANS    ONLY 


WHAT    I    DID 


T:IFTY    MILLIONS, 


MOSES    ADAMS. 


R(.)M    "I  UK    POSTMU 


CAESAR    MAUK1CK. 

WHIG 


PH  1  L  A  I)  E  1 

J.    B.    LI  I'l'l  M   < 
1874. 


OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS, 

TING 

I  Xj  Xj  I  O  2ST  S, 


RESPECTING 

JJ 


AS  IT  APPEARED  SERIALLY. 


"  THE  WINGS  OF  RICHES. — The  first  installment  of  Moses  Adams's 
new  story,  concerning  which  the  world  has  already  heard  so  many 
tantalizing  things  that  have  made  the  world  stand  on  tip-toe,  appeared 
in  the  daily  Whig  of  Saturday,  in  which  edition  (as  well  as  the 
semi-weekly  and  weekly)  the  rest  of  the  narrative  will  be  told  by 
the  ex-millionaire.  'Tis  marked  already  by  the  satire,  keen  but 
never  cutting  (it  can  cut,  but  it  doesn't),  the  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  alike  in  its  weakest  and  its  most  earnest,  its  most  and  least 
genial  aspects,  the  pathos,  the  riant  and  easy  humor,  that  make  Dr. 
Bagby,  in  our  critical  judgment,  another  Elia  of  our  era,  with  more 
varied  powers  than  Lamb,  though  none  so  well  cultivated  as  those 
of  that  essayist  and  occasional  poet.  'What  I  Did  with  My  Fifty 
Millions,'  recalls  the  Doctor's  best  work, '  Blue  Eyes  and  Battlewick,' 
published  many  years  ago  in  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  and, 
unfortunately,  never  put  before  the  world  in  book-form.  We  shall 
follow  the  career  of  that  fortune  with  eyes  of  interest,  especially  as 
we  have  an  idea  that  some  small  part  of  it  will  be  laid  apart  for  us. 
That  is,  if  we  survive  until  1876,  the  year  in  which  the  story  is  cast ; 
the  pkice  being  Richmond,  with  temporary  shuntings  on  the  side- 
traclorof  Lynchburg  and  Kurdsville." — Petersburg  Index. 

"  '  FIFTY  MILLIONS.' —  .  .  .  The  style  of  Doctor  Bagby  is  fitted  more 
to  the  pages  and  character  of  the  quarterlies  and  to  the  book  publica- 
tions of  the  day,  than  to  the  daily  and  weekly  journals.  Bagby  is 
the  Mark  Twain  of  Virginia,  and  we  have  no  doubt  that  some  of  our 
book  publishers  could  subserve  a  public  demand,  and  at  the  same 
time  promote  very  handsomely  the  business  interests  of  their  estab- 
lishments, by  furnishing  it  in  book-form.  '  What  I  Did  with  My 
Fifty  Millions'  is  quaint,  original,  and  peculiarly  Virginian,  and  its 
style  adds  to  the  virtues  of  its  great  local  interests,  those  features  of 
terse  and  trenchant  style,  which  will  cause  it  to  be  read  in  other 
circles  than  where  the  cavaliers  and  their  descendants  have  left  their 
footprints.'  " — Bristol  News. 


2  OPINIONS   OF  THE   PRESS. 

"' FIFTY  MILLIONS.' — Dr.  Adams's  great  romance,  'What  I  Did 
with  My  Fifty  Million  Dollars,'  is  concluded  in  the  last  number  of 
the  Whig,  in  which  the  wonderful  serial  has  been  published.  The 
final  installment  is  longer  than  those  which  preceded,  and  is  crowded 
with  incidents  and  tableaux  of  abiding  interest.  In  the  last  sad 
scene,  he  beholds,  as  in  a  trance,  all  the  comrades  and  companions 
of  his  earlier  years;  and  there  troop  in  long  procession  through  the 
old  man's  breaking  and  wandering  mind  the  figures,  inter  a/ios,  of 
"many  Petersburgers — Mr.  Osborne,  McCabe,  Glass,  'the  two  Bar- 
hams,'  the  two  Venables,  Cameron,  the  writer,  and  many  others. 
This  vivid  memory  cheers  the  old  man's  heart,  as  his  hold  on  earth 
relaxes,  and  he  falls  asleep  with  the  happy  vision  shining  in  his  eyes. 
We  hope  the  story  will  be  collected  and  printed  in  book-form  for  the 
amusement  and  entertainment  of  the  public.  There  is  in  it  much 
more  than  the  humor  which  plays  on  its  surface ;  there  is  even  more 
in  it  than  the  pathos  which  often  breaks  through  it  with  tears.  There 
is  in  the  analysis  of  the  vagaries  and  hallucinations  which  precede 
death,  the  evidence  of  deep  study  and  knowledge  of  physiology  and 
psychology  too.  But  we  will  not  discount  the  reader's  enjoyment  of 
the  '  Fifty  Millions.'  It  ought  by  all  means  to  appear  in  book- 
form."  — Index-Appeal. 

"•WHAT  I  DID  WITH  MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.' — The  series  of 
papers  under  this  fantastic  title  is  brought  to  a  conclusion  in  the 
issue  of  the  Richmond  Whig  of  May  1st. 

"  Dr.  Bagby  has  made  his  fancy  of  great  wealth  the  starting  point 
for  excursions  in  every  direction,  sketching,  as  he  alone  of  living 
writers  can  do,  the  familiar  Virginian  life  as  it  was  before  the  war, 
as  it  is  now  in  its  transition  state,  and  as  it  can  never  again  appear 
under  the  new  conditions  that  surround  us.  Untrammeled  by  any 
fixed  limits,  he  introduces  into  these  separate  pictures  his  own  reflec- 
tions on  men  and  things — reflections  now  profound,  now  playful,  here 
fantastic,  there  pathetic,  but  always  tinged  with  his  own  humor, 
always  revealing  something  of  his  own  self  and  thought.  These 
sketches  are  often  personal,  and  the  author  has  the  rare  boldacss  to 
talk  of  the  men  he  means  by  their  own  names,  but  the  persom^jiy  is 
but  such  as  Charles  Lamb  indulged  in  when  he  wrote  of  the  India 
House,  or  when  he  so  affectionately  and  yet  so  quizzically  recorded 
his  memories  of  the  Benchers  of  Gray's  Inn. 

"  Dr.  Bagby's  genius  is  akin  to  Lamb's;  he  has  the  same  keenness 
of  local  observation,  the  same  love  for  quaint  nooks  of  space,  for 
quaint  examples  of  mankind,  for  old  fashions  of  thought  and  speech 
and  life.  His  humor,  too,  is  of  Elia's  kind, — a  melancholy  humor, 
yet  a  jesting,  a  humor  often  sarcastic  in  form,  always  loving  in  fact. 
He  draws  his  pictures  of  Virginia  as  Lamb  did  of  London,  always 
narrow  in  his  theme,  but  always  wide  in  its  treatment,  perfect  in  the 
minute  observations  he  loves  to  make,  because  his  mind  is  practiced 
in  large  views  of  men  and  things. 

"  Virginia  has  in  truth  produced,  though  Virginia  hardly  knows  it, 


OPINIONS   OF  THE  PRESS.  3 

a  school  of  Virginian  art,  men  devoted  to  portraying  Virginian  life, 
and  portraying  it  so  well  that,  had  they  been  Bostonians,  with  the 
Old  Colony  for  their  subject,  the  country  would  have  resounded  with 
their  fame.  Elder  Woodward,  Sheppard,  and  Fisher,  with  brush 
and  pencil;  Valentine,  Gait,  andBarbee,  with  the  chisel;  in  science, 
Ruffin,  Rogers,  Maury,  and  Hotchkiss;  in  literature,  Thompson, 
Aylett,  Cooke,  Pollard,  Marian  Harland,  and  Geo.  W.  Bagby. 

"  Among  these  men  of  letters  the  last  stands  pre-eminent  as  the 
essayist  of  Virginia,  the  pen-painter  of  Virginians,  their  life  and 
manners,  their  foibles  and  their  virtues.  It  is  a  great  pity  that  these 
sketches  of  a  time  and  people  fast  passing,  almost  wholly  passed 
away,  should  not  be  collected  and  put  in  enduring  form.  Shep- 
pard's  pencil  has  preserved  in  outline  almost  every  phase  of  the 
old-time  negro  life  in  Virginia.  Elder's  b'rush  has  recorded  it  to  its 
minutest  detail,  and  Valentine  has  stamped  it  into  marble,  but  the 
essays  of  Dr.  Bagby  have  in  turn  touched  on  every  part  of  Virginia, 
and  touched  each  one  to  adorn  and  to  preserve.  The  country  vil- 
lage, the  court-house  green,  the  plantation  home,  the  editor,  the 
planter,  the  belle,  the  hard-worked  country  doctor,  the  pampered 
house-servant,  the  traveling  gambler,  the  court-house  bully,  the  country 
dandy,  the  hale  old  farmer,  and  the  busy,  much-worked  and  all-loving 
matron  and  mother ;  all  these,  as  seen  in  Virginia,  the  Virginia  as  it 
stood  in  1850,  and  likewise  the  Virginia  as  in  1870  it  was  passing 
away,  his  pictures  keep  alive  for  us  and  for  the  future. 

"  We  hope,  and  hope  earnestly,  that  the  essayist  will  frame  these 
pictures  in  a  book  and  so  preserve  them.  Let  the  '  Fifty  Millions' 
lead  and  let  the  title  be  '  For  Virginians  only,'  and  our  word  for  it, 
Virginia  will  buy  and  read,  and  value,  will  laugh,  and  now  and  again 
will  shed  a  pleasing  tear  over  that  book." — Norfolk  Virginian. 

"'FIFTY  MILLIONS.' — Doctor  Bagby  is  a  humorist  of  the  finest 
taste,  and  his  productions  are  of  native  growth.  Born  of  Virginia's 
soil,  suffused  with  a  local  coloring  at  once  pure  and  brilliant,  his  pic- 
tures of  men  and  scenes  have  a  charm  about  them  which  it  is  hard  to 
describe  without  incurring  the  charge  of  extravagance  from  those  who 
do  not  know  his  works.  For  us  this  provincialism  is  very  attractive, 
but,  in  addition,  we  find  that  he  scatters  wit,  wisdom  and  learning 
with  a  generous  profusion  through  his  pages,  so  that  one  rises  from 
his  '  Fifty  Millions'  with  a  conviction  that  until  this  serial  appeared 
Bagby  was  unknown  even  to  his  own  people  and  his  familiar  friends. 
This  performance  is  to  be  published  in  a  volume,  and  on  its  appear- 
ance we  shall  have  a  word  to  speak  about  it,  until  when  we  beg  his 
friends,  our  friends,  and  the  friends  of  our  native  literature  to  interest 
themselves  in  making  the  forthcoming  volume  a  complete  success." — 
Norfolk  ( Va.}  Landmark. 


FOR    VIRGINIANS    ONLY. 


WHAT    I    DID 


WITH   MY 


FIFTY    MILLIONS. 


BY 

MOSES   ADAMS. 


EDITED   FROM   THE   POSTHUMOUS   MS. 

BY 

CJESAR    MAURICE,   ESQ., 

OF  THE   RICHMOND   (VA.)  WHIG. 


PHI LADELPH I  A: 

J.  B.   LIPPINCOTT    &    CO. 

1874. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1874,  by 

G.  W.   BAGBY. 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


PREFACE  BY  THE  EDITOR. 


IT  seems  that  the  old  man  ("Mozis")*  did  really  be- 
lieve that  he  possessed  an  enormous  sum  of  money — the 
internal  evidence  leaves  no  doubt  whatever  on  this  point 
— and  he  must  have  passed  many  sleepless  nights  in 
imagining  what  he  did  with  it.  He  seems,  too,  to  have 
labored  under  the  additional  delusion  that  he  had  been 
for  a  very  long  time  "cooped  up,"  as  he  expresses  it,  in 
editorial  sanctums  and  libraries,  whereas  it  is  well  known 
that  his  actual  business  was  that  of  a  hoop-pole  splitter  in 
the  barrel  factory  of  the  Columbian  Mills.  But  this  con- 
finement appears  to  have  disagreed  with  him,  and  may 
have  led  to  the  mental  torsion  that  gave  birth  to  the 
strange  production  now  published.  Hence  the  passionate 
outburst  of  affection  for  his  foster-mother,  Nature,  which 
would  be  almost  ludicrous  did  we  not  remember  how  the 
simple  old  soul  must  have  pined  for  the  free  life  in  the 
woods,  to  which,  as  a  mauler  of  rails  for  Col.  Hubard, 
of  Buckingham,  he  had  been  accustomed  from  his  very 
boyhood. 

The  date  "1890"  in  the  first  foot-note  indicates  that 
the  article,  written  at  some  uncertain  period,  was  after- 
wards revised  and  annotated  at  intervals,  as  the  old  man's 
strength  enabled  him  to  indulge  in  literary  occupations — 
probably  after  nightfall,  his  only  leisure  time.  His  pre- 

*  "  Mozis  Addums,"  whose  "  Letters  to  Billy  Ivvins,"  published  in  the 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  many  years  ago,  produced  such  an  excite- 
ment in  Virginia  and  throughout  the  South.  Late  in  life,  when  Fifty  Mil- 
lions was  written,  he  had  learned  to  spell  his  name  correctly  and  to  write 
not  very  bad  English. 

7 


2073221 


8  PREFACE  BY  THE  EDITOR. 

cise  age  has  always  been  a  matter  of  conjecture,  but  had 
he  lived  till  1890  he  would  have  been  not  less  than  one 
hundred  and  eleven  years  old.  The  records  of  the  old 
Masonic  Lodge  at  Curdsville  prove  this. 

Due  allowance  must  be  made  for  the  discrepancies  in 
the  annotated  dates,  for  the  interpolations  of  various 
kinds,  and  for  the  garrulity  incident  to  age.  These  and 
the  doting  fondness  of  the  old  man  for  the  Virginia  cus- 
toms, which  he  fancied  he  had  placed  upon  everlasting 
foundations,  with  the  further  fact  that  after  much  reflec- 
tion he  could  not  prevail  upon  himself  to  spend  any  of 
his  money  outside  of  his  native  State,  may  well  excuse  his 
wild  fancies  and  incoherences.  And  our  readers  no  doubt 
will  the  more  readily  condone  his  faults  in  view  of  the 
fact  that,  in  his  prime,  the  well-meaning  creature  gave 
them  many  a  hearty  laugh  which  they  have  not  yet  for- 
gotten. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

People  have  been  so  delighted  with  the  extravaganzas 
of  MOSES  ADAMS  that  they  have  demanded  the  publication 
of  his  lucubrations  in  an  enduring  book  form.  It  seems 
never  to  have  occurred  to  them  that  in  laughing  at 
MOSES'S  follies  they  are  laughing  at  their  own.  De  te 
fabula  narrattir.  Those  who  read  between  the  lines  (as 
the  French  say)  detect  in  all  MOSES'S  phantasies  a  lurking 
satire  on  the  disposition  made  by  poor  old  Virginia  of  her 
"fifty  millions"  on  internal  improvements.  We  hope, 
when  they  read  again,  they  will  inwardly  digest,  and  profit 
by  the  operation.  In  the  meantime,  MOSES,  no  doubt, 
chuckles  in  his  sleeve,  and  is  happy  in  contemplating  the 
hilarity  of  his  dupes.  C.  M. 

Whig  Office,  Riclimond,  Va. 


CONTENTS. 


FIRST  INSTALLMENT. 

PACK 

Where  the  Money  came  from — First  Effect  of  Riches — Yearning  for 
Ashcake  and  Buttermilk  —  Overwhelming  Sense  of  Poverty — 
Misery  and  Wrath — A  Morning  Walk — Accident — Calvin  Jones 
and  Tom  Kirkpatrick 13 


SECOND  INSTALLMENT. 

The  Cat  out  of  the  Bag — How  People  behaved — Park  and  Reservoir 
for  Lynchburg — Alarming  Increase  of  Destitution — W.  E.  Binford 
and  the  Widow  Bexley — How  to  Help,  whom  to  Help,  and  When 
— Rush  of  Editors,  Photographers,  etc. — "  Sky  Surprises  "  .  .19 


THIRD  INSTALLMENT. 

Fits  of  Pride — How  cured — A  Sneaking  Heart-Devil — The  Pleasure 
of  Giving — Some  Schoolmarms — Ham.  Chamberlayne — Deacon 
Handy — "The  Native  Virginian" — Numerous  Widows — Colonel 
McDonald — Billy  Christian — Trick  on  a  Fat  Doctor,  etc.  .  .  25 


FOURTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Laura  Park — Sneers  at  Jones  and  Adams — The  Great  Reservoir — 
New  Market-House — Grand  Celebration — Arrival  of  Old  Lynch- 
burgers — Ballard  Kidd  and  Harriet  Rouse — Works  at  Curdsville,       . 
etc. — Rage   of  a  baffled   Rich    Man — College  for  Old  Virginia 
Fiddlers,  etc 33 


FIFTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Blessings  of  the  Fiddlers'  College — Dancing  vs.  Pure  Hugging — 
Course  on  Fife  and  Tobacco-Horn — Blind  Billy — Buckingham 
Female  Institute  —  "Chermany'1  and  "  Ant'ny  Over"  —  Lang- 
horne's  Tavern,  £a  Ira,  New  Store,  Raine's  Tavern,  etc. — Spout 
Spring,  Red  House,  Pamplin's,  Tarwallet,  etc. — College  for  Old 
Virginia  Cooks — Hampden  Sydney  College — Mosque  and  Shot- 
Tower  at  Burkeville 40 

A*  9 


I0  CONTENTS. 


SIXTH   INSTALLMENT. 

Good  Sidewalks  in  Richmond — Council  of  Cobblers  and  Ostlers — 
New  Capitol  proposed — Intense  Rage  of  the  Legislature — Speeches 
of  Indignant  Members — Appearance  of  Capitol  in  1910 — Strangers 
from  Japan  and  North  Carolina — Deplorable  Consequence  of  a 
Bank,  etc 47 


.SEVENTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Railroad  Depots  in  Richmond — Improvements  on  Broad  Street — 
Shields  House — Virginia  Historical  Society  Building — Colonel  T. 
H.  Wynne  and  Dr.  W.  P.  Palmer — Automaton  of  Com.  Porter — 
Brice  Church — Free- Pew  Question  settled — Paganism  of  Adams — 
Pulpit  Propriety  and  Duck  Guns — Rev.  Dr.  Broadus — Varlets, 
Cudgels,  and  Assassins  —  Congregational  Singing  —  Church  of 
Spectroscope 52 


EIGHTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Mr.  Pigskin  on  Immigration— Adams  Hints  at  Empire — Ten  Thou- 
sand Dollars  each  to  Fifteen  Hundred  Girls — Bad  Consequences 
of  Good  Intentions — Excitement  in  Virginia — Adams  Hated — 
Regarded  as  an  Active  Intransitive  Fool — Gov.  Kemper — Ex- 
pensive Joke  on  Wife — A  I^esson  to  Husbands — Rev.  Dr.  Peterkin 
— Venom  without  Spondulics 60 


NINTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Sad  Results  of  an  Explosion — Drs.  Cullen  and  McGuire — Happy 
Resection  of  a  Steeple — Burwell  Music  Hall — Great  Fiddling 
Festival  —  A  Treat  for  Pretty  Girls  —  Happiest  Time  of  Old 
Adams's  Life  —  Gen.  Richardson  and  Col.  Sherwin  McRae — 
Adams's  Patent  Lecture-Halls — Judge  Waller  Stapler — "Johnny 
Reb." 69 


TENTH    INSTALLMENT. 

Cremation  of  Piano  Advertisers — Wisdom  of  Roman  Catholics — 
The  Addie  Deane  House — University  of  Virginia — Judge  William 
Robertson,  Dr.  Maupin,  etc. — Editorial  Academy — Asylum  for 
Worthless  Young  Men  —  Parke  Park  —  Richmond  Boulevard — 
Matthews  &  Matthews — Life's  Appomattox — Semi-Phalansterian 
Squares,  etc 76 


CONTENTS. 


ELEVENTH  INSTALLMENT. 

FAGB 

Black  Crook  Club  Monument  —  Dr.  Leigh  Burton  —  Nat.  Stur-. 
divant  Terrace — Hermann  Garden  —  Louis  Euker  —  Cornelia 
Cathedral — Worship  Purely  Musical — Leo  Wheat — Major  Burr 
Noland — Diseased  Germans — Midnight  New  Year  Services — Our 
Saviour — Mary  Davidson— General  Mahone — Elder,  Fisher,  and 
Sheppard — G.  Watson  James,  etc 87 

TWELFTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Tour  with  Artist-Friends — Suggestive  Summering — Badly  Apple- 
Brandied — Judge  Crump — John  R.  Thompson's  Tomb — Yankees 
— "  The  Last  of  Pea  Time  " — Squirted  out  of  Town — Peter  Mayo 
and  Alexander  Cameron — Valentine's  Colossal  Statue — Dr.  W. 
Hand  Browne — Adams's  "  Folly,"  Eleven  Hundred  Feet  High — 
Gala  Day  all  around  the  Globe — Excitement  in  Lynchburg — Jack 
Slaughter  and  Robin  Terry — Trash  Green — Death  of  Wife — Badly 
Kicked — Home  near  Pamlin's  Depot 97 


THIRTEENTH  INSTALLMENT. 

A  Lonely  Old  Age — Dark  and  Bitter  Thoughts — Arrival  of  the 
Commodore — Throwing  Mexican  Dollars — A  Negro  Killed — A 
Stormy  Night — Trouble  of  Life's  Ending — Misery  of  this  World 
— Hallucinations — In  the  Fodder-stack — A  Voice  .  .  .  109 


FOURTEENTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Aunt  Polly  Waddy — Cavalry  Comin' — Ned  Gregory,  Barren  Hope, 
V.  Dabney  and  others — Slugs  and  Gulgers — Col.  T.  F.  Owens 
— An  Old  Virginia  Breakfast — The  Commodore  Breaks  Loose^— 
A  Terrible  Time — Cremation — Loose  Again — Earthquakes,  Chol- 
era, etc, — Grand  Dinner — Royal  Ashcake — Toasts,  Speeches,  and 
Perfect  Bliss — Asleep  at  His  Own  Table 116 


FIFTEENTH  INSTALLMENT. 

In  Gordonsville — Grand  Triangular  Bob  Sully  Hotel — Fried  Chicken 
and  Hard-boiled  Eggs  in  Effigy  —  Vast  Gongs — Stofers,  Frys, 
Scotts,  Chapmans,  Kincheloes,  etc.  —  The  Sphinx  —  Adams  a 
Nuisance — Sent  to  Poor-House — Death — Burial  and  Obituary — 
The  End 125 


WHAT  I   DID 


MY   FIFTY   MILLIONS. 


FIRST  INSTALLMENT. 

Where  the  Money  came  from — First  Effect  of  Riches — Yearning  for 
Ashcake  and  Buttermilk — Overwhelming  Sense  of  Poverty — Misery 
and  Wrath — A  Morning  Walk — Accident — Calvin  Jones  and  Tom 
Kirkpatrick. 

FOR  twenty  years  at  least  I  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
putting  myself  to  sleep  by  imagining  what  I  would  do 
with  the  precise  sum  of  fifty  millions  of  dollars.  An 
excellent  hypnotic  I  found  it,  with  no  morphine  or 
chloral  after-effects.  It  may  have  unfitted  me  for  the 
hard  grind  of  actual  life,  but  no  matter  now.  When  it 
came  I  was  as  tranquil  as  a  May  morning.  The  fact  is, 
the  transfer  was  not  completed  until  the  close  of  the 
month  of  May,  1876.  Negotiations,  etc.,  had  been  going 
on  for  months  beforehand,  and  it  has  always  been  a 
matter  of  inordinate  pride  to  me  that  I  attended  to  my 
regular  duties  and  kept  the  whole  thing  a  profound  secret 
from  my  family,  friends,  and,  indeed,  everybody  in 
America — the  money  having  come  from  Hindostan.  It 
required  a  deal  of  innocent  lying  to  do  this,  but  secrecy 
was  indispensable  to  the  surprises  I  meditated,  and  a 
surprise,  you  know,  is  the  very  cream  of  the  delight  as 
well  of  giving  as  receiving. 

One  of  the  bankers,  a  Calcutta  man,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  had  the  good  sense,  on  taking  leave,  to  put  into 
my  hands  a  small  box  filled  with  gold-pieces,  so  that  I 
might  feel  my  wealth  right  away  and  have  no  doubts 
about  it.  The  party  left  on  the  nine  o'clock  Fredericksburg 

*  '3 


I4  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

train,  and,  after  bidding  them  good-by  at  the  hotel,  I  put 
a  handful  of  money  in  my  pocket  and  walked  out  to  get 
a  little  fresh  air.  My  wife  always  interprets  this  to  mean 
a  glass  of  beer,  but  she  was  mistaken  in  this  instance. 
Besides,  she  was  up  the  country  at  the  time. 

I  went  straight  to  Gerot's,  ordered  a  nice  little  supper 
to  be  sent,  to  a  room  up-stairs  which  I  engaged  for  the 
night,  and  with  the  supper  a  bottle  of  his  best  cham- 
pagne, a  bundle  of  his  finest  cigars  (I  found  I  did  not 
want  a  whole  box),  a  quire  of  foolscap,  pens,  and  ink. 
Then  I  walked  down  to  the  telegraph-office. 

On  the  way  a  number  of  acquaintances  greeted  me, 
and  I  wondered  to  myself  whether  the  tone  of  their  voices 
(they  were  not  uncourteous  at  all)  would  have  been  dif- 
ferent if  they  had  known  how  much  money  I  was  worth. 
A  few  months  later  my  wonder  was  quieted. 

The  reason  I  went  to  the  telegraph -office  was  this : 
Years  and  years  before,  my  friend,  Calvin  D.  Jones,  had 
said  to  me, — 

"If  I  should  ever  become  suddenly  very  rich,  do  you 
know  what  I  would  do?" 

"No,"  I  replied. 

"I  should  run  as  hard  as  I  could  stave  and  give  away 
every  dollar  I  could  persuade  myself  to. give,  for  if  I 
stopped  one  second  to  think  about  it  I  should  never  give 
one  cent." 

By  that  I  knew  that  Jones  was  a  man  of  intellect. 

He  then  lived  in  Rome,  Georgia,  and  was  drugging 
people  there.  I  telegraphed  him  to  draw  on  me  for 
expenses,  and  meet  me  as  early  as  possible  in  Lynchburg. 

That  done,  I  returned  to  Gerot's. 

My  supper,  as  nice  a  one  as  heart  could  wish,  was  all 
ready  for  me  in  my  room.  How  often  and  over  again 
my  appetite  had  been  whetted  for  that  identical  supper ! 
and  now  there  it  was  before  me,  the  gold  in  my  pocket, 
the  wine,  the  cigars,  paper  and  pens,  all  as  I  had  imagined 
a  thousand  times. 

And  what  think  you  was  the  result  ? 

A  loss  of  appetite  ? 

Not  that  exactly,  but  an  intense  honing  for  ashcake 
and  buttermilk. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  !5 

Gerot  had  neither,  and  it  was  too  late  to  get  them  else- 
where ;  so  I  drank  a  glass  or  two  of  wine,  and  addressed 
myself  to  the  task  of  writing  out  minutely  what  I  intended 
to  do  with  my  money.  The  plan  was  in  my  head,  com- 
plete and  clear,  and,  once  written  down,  my  purpose  was 
to  carry  it  out  to  the  very  letter. 

I  had  not  finished  the  first  page  before  I  stopped  sud- 
denly, threw  down  the  pen,  and  groaned  aloud  in  such 
anguish  of  spirit  as  I  had  never  felt  before ;  for  never 
before  had  I  felt  so  crushing  a  sense  of  poverty. 

"My  God!"  I  cried,  "what  can  a  man  do  with  a 
miserable  pittance  of  fifty  millions?  I  want  to  give 
Virginia  a  perfect  system  of  county  roads,  so  that  one 
may  get  off  at  a  station  and  go  to  the  nearest  country- 
house  without  breaking  his  neck,  and  it  would  take  five 
hundred  millions  to  do  that.  Then  there  is  the  capitol — 
to  fix  that  and  its  surroundings  as  I  would  like  to  have 
them  fixed  would  consume  the  last  dollar  in  my  posses- 
sion. Bah!" 

That  bah !  was  intoned  more  like  an  oath  than  an 
introit.  I  rose  and  paced  the  room  for  an  hour  or  more 
in  mingled  rage  and  misery.  Then  I  drank  the  rest  of 
the  wine  (it  would  not  keep,  in  fact,  was  flat  already),  put 
a  cigar  in  my  pocket  ("  maybe  Gerot  will  take  the  others 
back — a  pipe  is  plenty  good  enough  for  me,  suits  my 
weak  digestion"*),  and  walked  out. 

Day  was  just  faintly  dawning. 

Putting  a  chew  of  tobacco  in  my  mouth  and  saving  my 
cigar  for  after  breakfast,  I  strode  furiously  up  the  tow-path 
of  the  canal,  exclaiming  aloud,  as  I  went  along, — 

"I  must  be  rich  !  I  will  be  rich!  I  will  pinch  and 
screw,  and  save  and  shave,  and  skin  until  I  get  some 
money.  I  will  go  into  Wall  Street,  join  a  railroad  ring, 
get  elected  to  Congress — do  anything  to  make  a  fortune. 
I  will  invest,  I  will  buy  town-lots  in  Manchester — I  must 
make  money.  I  want  a  hundred  million,  two  hundred 
million,  as  much  as  Astor,  Vanderbilt,  and  Stewart  com- 
bined, and  /  will  have  it.  Yes,  a  thousand,  two  thousand, 
millions  of  dollars.  I  will  flood  the  South  with  money. 

*  He  refused  positively  to  do  it — 1890. 


X6  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

Set  every  industry  humming,  restock  every  plantation, 
buy  up  every  negro  legislature,  buy  Congress,  buy  Grant 
bodily;  my  people  shall  not,  no,  by  the  gods  !  they  shall 
not  suffer  any  longer." 

A  thought  struck  me  like  a  blow  from  a  catapult. 

"  Suppose  you  do  all  this,  and  in  Persia  and  India  tens 
of  thousands  are  perishing  from  starvation.  The  world  is 
too  big  for  you.  You  cannot  be  God." 

•Miserable,  yea,  the  miserablest  of  living  men,  I  bowed 
myself  down  where  I  stood  and  actually  wept  with  wrath 
and  mortification. 

Just  then  a  sweet  breeze  sprang  up,  the  waves  began  to 
clap  their  hands,  the  song  of  the  river,  which  I  had  not 
heard  before,  mingled  with  the  soft  tones  of  the  wind  and 
the  orisons  of  the  birds,  the  heavens  above  me  flushed 
with  the  love-light  of  expectation  at  the  sun's  coming, 
and  aloft  and  alow  and  around  was  the  ineffable  loveliness 
and  peace  of  morning  in  its  prime.  Suddenly  there  came 
from  thicket,  or  copse,  or  the  distant  forest,  I  could  not 
tell  where,  a  "wood-note  wild"  of  some  bird  I  had  not 
heard  for  half  a  century  nearly,  and  in  an  instant  the 
beauty,  the  mystery,  the  holiness  of  nature  came  back  to 
me  just  as  it  came  in  childhood  when  sometimes  my  play- 
mates left  me  alone  in  the  great  orchard  of  my  home  in 
Cumberland. 

From  cursing  and  moaning  I  fell  to  adoring.  My  soul, 
full  of  gratitude,  could  find  only  the  simplest  expression. 

"Thank  God  !  I  can  do  some  good ;  and  I  will." 

My  short  but  deep  thanksgiving  ended,  I  gave  myself 
up  wholly  to  the  dewy  beauty  and  freshness  around  me, 
and  cried  out,  in  rapture, — 

"Oh,  my  mother,  my  mother,  my  mother!  my  foster- 
mother  !  the  only  mother  I  ever  knew  !  all  these  long, 
long,  long  years  have  I  been  cooped  up  in  sanctums,  in 
libraries,  in  all  sorts  of  dens  of  houses,  pining  for  you, 
with  your  bright  face  in  full  view  across  the  water  or  over 
the  hill  yonder,  but  no  chance  to  come  to  you  except  for 
a  moment  only.  And  now,  now,  O  Father  of  Earth,  I 
can  come  back  to  you — that  is  one  blessedness  of  riches. 
Back,  never,  never,  never  more  to  be  parted  from  you 
till,  sinner  that  I  am,  I  go  to  heaven." 


MY  FIPTY  MILLIONS.  17 

I  trust  there  is  no  good  business  man  within  the  reading 
of  my  print  who  will  not  say  with  considerable  emphasis 
that  I  made  a  sufficient  sentimental  ass  of  myself.  At  any 
rate,  from  that  hour  I  have  never  hard  any  further  trouble 
with  myself,  never  desired  to  be  inordinately  rich,  but 
have  been  perfectly  content  to  struggle  on  with  my  pitiful 
fifty  millions  and  do  the  best  I  could. 

It  being  now  broad  daylight,  I  turned  homewards,  and, 
as  I  did  so,  my  thoughts  took  another  turn. 

"  Moses,  old  fellow,"  said  I  to  myself,  "  you  and  I  are 
going  to  have  a  good  time.  The  way  we  are  going  to 
find  some  pretty  stream  in  the  depths  of  the  woods,  and 
spend  the  livelong  day  by  its  side  enjoying  the  clear,  run- 
ning water  (just  as  we  did  in  Princeton  at  Stony  Brook, 
before  we  ever  dreamed  of  the  protoxide  of  hydrogen), 
and  the  blue  heavens  shining  through  the  tall  tree-tops, 
before  Old  Probabilities,  drot  him  !  was  born,  and  we 
ever  knew  anything  or  cared  anything  about  atmospheric 
waves,  the  nebula  hypothesis,  or  any  such  foolishness,  is 
the  way.  Won't  we  consecrate  a  day,  yea,  many  days, 
every  recurring  season  to  the  worship  of  nature,  just  as 
you  and  I  and  William  Christian*  used  to  do  ever  so 
many  years  ago  in  Lynchburg?  I  just  tell  you,  my  son, 
we  are  going  to  have  the  finest,  the  tip-toppest-A-Number- 
Onest  kind  of  a  time.  Why,  sir,  we'll " 

In  a  trance  of  delight  at  the  pleasure  in  store  for  me,  I 
had  wandered  several  feet  below  the  level  of  the  tow-path. 
An  enormous  black  bolide,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  fell  upon 
me  from  the  skies,  and  consciousness  left  me. 

When  I  came  to  myself  I  was  lying  on  the  deck  of  a 
freight-boat,  receiving  such  attention  as  the  ignorant  cap- 
tain could  give.  The  bolide  proved  to  be  only  a  mule, 
which  had  broken  a  rotten  tow-line  and  tumbled  down 
the  canal-bank,  stunning  me  as  he  passed.  A  fracture  of 
the  shoulder-blade  and  a  few  severe  bruises  were  soon 
patched  up  by  Dr.  Coleman  after  my  return  to  the  city, 
so  that  I  took  the  ten  o'clock  train  on  the  Danville  road 
as  if  nothing  had  happened. 

*  A  friend  of  mine.  His  middle  name  was  Henry  Brown,  but  he 
dropped  the  Brown  1884. 

2* 


!8  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

Jones  came  promptly  to  Lynchburg,  and  refused  flatly 
to  believe  in  my  fifty  millions,  but  being  convinced, 
mounted  a  horse  and  proceeded  day  after  day  to  scour 
the  country  around  the  town,  to  the  bewilderment  of  the 
citizens.  Such  was  his  zest,  and  so  heartily  did  he  enter 
into  my  plans,  that  he  kept  me  up  every  night  till  one  or 
two  o'clock,  suggesting,  altering,  and  greatly  improving 
the  hints  I  had  originally  given  him.  During  the  day- 
time I  had  a  trying  experience.  Forced  to  keep  quiet, 
while  the  money  burned  in  my  pocket,  I  was  dreadfully 
bored.* 

At  length  Jones  came  back  one  night  in  triumph — he 
had  found,  not  what  he  wanted  exactly,  but  the  best  that 
could  be  had. 

"  I  can  fix  all  the  rest,"  said  he,  after  having  given  me 
a  minute  account  of  the  topography. 

Tom  Kirkpatrickf  was  called  in  the  very  next  morn- 
ing, the  lawyer's  part  of  the  business  intrusted  to  him, 
and  having  furnished  these  friends  of  my  early  manhood 
with  work  that  would  occupy  them  a  long  time  (Jones 
particularly),  and  pay  them  well,  I  hurried  back  to  Rich- 
mond. Ad.  Williams  and  J.  L.  Apperson|  laughed  in 
my  face  at  first,  but  in  due  time  they  became  convinced, 
as  Jones  had  been,  and  promised  me  to  make  the  neces- 
sary purchases  as  adroitly  and  cheaply  as  under  the  cir- 
cumstances was  possible.  And  they  were  as  good  as  their 
word.  They  did  their  duty  quickly,  that  is  to  say,  within 
a  few  months,  and  at  much  less  cost  than  I  had  counted 
upon.  I  had  to  be  economical,  and  I  will  say  here  that 
few  if  any  of  my  agents  "ever  pleased  me  more  than 
Williams  &  Apperson. 

It  was  half  a  year  before  Jones  and  Kirkpatrick  com- 
pleted their  work,  a  peculiar  obstacle  intervening.  §  Six 
months  of  torture  mingled  with  pleasure  (knowing  what 


*  Dr.  Early  pulled  out  my  last  tooth  at  this  time,  and  the  new  set  made 
me  miserable  in  spite  of  my  money. 

t  Afterwards  President  of  the  Court  of  Appeals. 

j  Well  known  real  estate  men  in  Richmond  fifty  years  ago.  Very 
correct  in  their  dealings. 

$  Everybody,  even  the  country  people,  were  alarmed  lest  the  Old 
Market-house  should  be  disturbed. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  !9 

wa^  to  come)  to  me.  My  family  and  friends  upbraided 
me  for  my  long-continued  idleness,  while  everybody 
wondered  how  I  made  buckle  and  tongue  meet.  I  did 
it  though,  and  am  proud  I  did  not  overdo  the  thing. 
Money  was  a  little,  very  little,  bit  more  plentiful  at  my 
house,  and  my  wife,  satisfied  that  I  did  not  gamble,* 
convinced  herself  that  I  had  drawn  a  prize  in  the  Louis- 
ville Library  Lottery.  She  had  a  notion,  too,  that  I  had 
found  a  gold-mine.  [A  great  calamity  to  a  Buckingham 
man.]  What  else  could  make  me  spend  whole  days  by 
my  lone  self  in  the  woods  ?  She  was  certain  of  it. 


SECOND  INSTALLMENT. 

The  Cat  out  of  the  Bag — How  People  behaved — Park  and  Reservoir  for 
Lynchburg — Alarming  Increase  of  Destitution — W.  E.  Binford  and 
the  Widow  Bexley — How  to  Help,  whom  to  Help,  and  When — Rush 
of  Editors,  Photographers,  etc. — "  Sky  Surprises." 

BUT  you  should  have  seen  her  face  that  bright  day  (the 
brightest  of  my  life,  I  sometimes  think),  when  I  broke 
the  news  of  my  good  fortune  to  her,  and  proved  it  by 
incontestable  vouchers.  It  was  worth  fifty-one  millions 
of  dollars  at  the  very  least,  that  face  was. 

The  next  day  I  was  back  in  Lynchburg. 

There  is  a  pea-green  edifice  on  Court  Street,  opposite 
the  court-house.  I  went  there  first.  There  is  a  smaller 
edifice  a  little  way  down  the  hill,  behind  the  pea-green 
house.  I  went  there  next.  There  is  a  brick  house  near 
the  reservoir,  and  about  a  square  from  West  Street.  I 
went  there,  smiling  openly  [W.  R.  M.  and  self  got 
arrested  there  one  night  for  serenading  a  tree-box],  as 
I  slowly  walked  along  the  wall  of  the  reservoir.  Then  I 
went  to  a  house  on  Federal  Hill,  which  has  a  large  garden 
attached  to  it.  And  then  I  went  up  to  Liberty. 

*  It  is  true  I  used  to  play  teetotum  for  June  apples  when  a  boy,  but 
that  oughtn't  to  count. 


20  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

What  happened  in  consequence  of  these  visits  is,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  none  of  your  business ;  but  if  I  had 
given  my  friends  in  Lynchburg  and  at  Avenel  the  whole 
world,  I  would  have  done  for  them  no  more  than  they 
deserved.  To  them  I  owed  many,  a  great  many,  of  the 
happiest  hours  of  my  life.  "  Owed,"  did  I  say?  There 
was  no  debt,  no  sense  of  obligation,  on  my  part ;  no- 
thing of  the  kind.  I  would  have  been  a  dog,  the  biggest 
and  most  villainous  of  dogs,  if  I  had  not  gone  straight  to 
them.  I  simply  could  not  have  been  happy  if  they  had 
not  shared  largely  of  my  happiness. 

But  the  cat  was  out  of  the  bag. 

Everybody  knew  (it  ran  like  lightning  over  the  whole 
State  and  to  the  very  ends  of  the  earth,  I  believe)  that 
Moses  was  what  they  called  "immensely  rich,"  and  that 
he  intended  Lynchburg  should  have  a  magnificent  park 
and  a  reservoir,  the  like  of  which  had  not  been  seen  since 
the  days  of  the  Romans,  nor  even  then.  Other  things,  it 
was  whispered,  were  to  come. 

I  wish  very  much  I  could  say  that  the  change  in  my 
circumstances  produced  no  change  in  myself,  or  in  others. 
But  it  was  not  so.  Success  had  never  greatly  elated  me 
or  made  me  conceited,  nor  did  it  now.  But  one  of  the 
annoyances  of  pecuniary  success  is  that  it  parts  one  from 
his  friends,  and  this  from  no  fault  of  either  the  rich  or 
the  poor  man.  The  former  cannot  make  his  friend  as 
rich  as  himself,  while  the  latter,  if  a  man  of  spirit,  is  not 
content  to  be  on  unequal  terms  with  any  one,  even  in  the 
matter  of  money.  Affiliation  of  rich  with  rich,  and  poor 
with  poor,  is  inevitable.  So  it  would  have  been  with  me, 
had  I  not  been  too  old  to  form  intimacies  of  any  kind, 
save  with  womenfolks,  to  whom  I  had  belonged  for  many 
years,  and  continued  to  belong.  But  men  of  wealth, 
gravitating  towards  me  naturally,  became  my  associates 
to  such  an  extent  that  one  day  I  suddenly  waked  up  to 
the  fact  that  those  who  had  not  succeeded,  had  no  money 
nor  the  art  of  making  it,  no  longer  interested  me.  How 
often  I  had  decried  this  and  sneered  at  it  in  some  of  my 
acquaintances  who  had  gone  ahead  of  me  !  And  now  I 
caught  myself  saying  testily  of  this  or  that  man  who  had 
once  been  tolerably  dear  to  me,  "He  is  down  on  his 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  21 

luck."  As  if  it  were  the  man's  fault,  when  I  knew  he 
was  doing  his  utmost  to  rise.  But  such  knowledge  does 
not  better  the  matter  nor  soften  the  heart.  For  the 
innate  weakness  of  not  being  able  to  get  along  in  the 
world  there  is  no  remedy  ;  it  is  the  least  curable  of  dis- 
eases. Pity  for  the  weakling  is  of  no  avail.  All  of  this 
is  very  natural.  The  traveler  ascending  a  river  in  a 
powerful  steamer  cannot  long  concern  himself  about  the 
poor  creature  who  is  drifting  downward  in  a  canoe,  and 
is  soon  lost  to  sight.  Sympathy  for  him  is  a  waste  of 
energy,  which  had  better  be  preserved  until  it  can  do 
some  good. 

This,  I  believe,  is  the  ordinary  course  of  reasoning  in 
the  minds  of  men  who  rise  above  their  fellows,  and  fancy 
they  are  the  engine  in  the  steamboat,  and  not  the  cwt  and 
a  half  of  humanity  on  the  deck.  It  was  in  my  own  case, 
despite  the  fact  that  my  money  had  come  to  me  as  it  were 
out  of  heaven.  And  whence  comes  every  good  and 
perfect  gift  but  from  heaven  ? 

You  made  your  money,  you  say.     But,  my  friend,  who 


I  am  persuaded  that  there  will  be  plenty  of  conceit  in 
this  world,  pride  of  riches,  of  talent,  station,  what  not, 
so  long  as  the  delusion  about  free-will*  lasts.  But  what 
has  that  to  do  with  my  fifty  millions  ?  Find  out,  if  you 
can,  my  friend. 

A  very  few  experiments  satisfied  me  that  there  was 
scarcely  one  of  the  "poor  devils  who  could  not  get  along 
in  the  world"  who  did  not  crawl,  and  that  quite  rapidly 
in  some  instances,  where  the  proper  remedy  was  applied, 
when  help  was  given  in  time,  and  thoughtfully  .\  [I  am 
more  doubtful  about  helping  than  I  was  ten  years  ago  — 
1892.] 

"  Fortunately,  it  was  in  your  power  to  render  just  that 
kind  of  aid." 

Yes,  I  am  aware  of  the  fact.  I  am  also  aware  of  the 
fact  that  there  never  was  a  thoughtful  rich  man  before  my 
time. 

*  Jimber-jawed  men  will  never  concede  this. 

f  The  habit  is  to  help  only  when  men  are  at  the  last  gasp. 


22  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

The  change  in  other  people  towards  myself  was  at  first 
not  what  I  had  anticipated ;  nor  did  I  ever  receive  the 
worship  [I  sometimes  regret  this]  .which  some  of  my 
readers  may  suppose  I  redeived.  Here  and  there  turned 
up  a  wretch  who  would  have  eaten  my  shoes  if  I  had 
permitted  him;  now  and  then  a  great  man,  failing, 
clutched  at  me  with  a  desperation  that  excited  my  pro- 
found pity;  sometimes  I  was  amused,  and  sometimes 
disgusted,  at  the  obsequious  fawning  of  certain  parties, 
whose  names  I  am  tempted  to  mention ;  but  in  the  main 
people  were  manly  enough,  and  soon  gave  me  to  know 
that  in  their  eyes  I  was  no  better  than  I  had  been  before. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  very  certain  that  I  became  in  no 
time  a  most  respectable  person,  and  received  a  deal  of 
attention.  The  courtesy  of  life-insurance  and  sewing- 
machine  agents  was  marked.  Circulars  of  every  descrip- 
tion made  waste-paper  a  drug  in  my  house.  Editors 
kindly  chronicled  my  every  movement.  Photographers 
seemed  to  have  a  high  opinion  of  my  face.  Biographies 
of  Adams  became  the  order  of  the  day.  Mr.  Smyth 
haunted  me,  and  my  likeness  appeared  in  Frank  Leslie 
within  a  week  after  my  wealth  was  heralded  to  the  world. 
Bank  presidents  sometimes  bowed  to  me.  Mr.  Z.,  of  the 
Big  Concern,  suddenly  ceased  to  forget  that  he  had  been 
repeatedly  introduced  to  me ;  and  it  was  intimated  to  me 
that  an  article  from-  my  pen  would  be  acceptable  to  any 
country  paper  in  Virginia. 

Opportunities  to  invest,  to  take  stock,  to  go  into  part- 
nership, and  to  promote  the  most  meritorious  business 
enterprises,  were  frequent.  A  hint  about  starting  a  liter- 
ary paper  in  Richmond  was  boldly  thrown  at  me.  I 
neither  invested  nor  took  stock,  my  money  being  already 
well  placed,  so  as  to  yield  me  an  income  of  four  and  a  half 
millions. 

A  person  whom  I  had  good  reason  to  consider  the 
most  consummate  [something  erased  here — Ed.  Whig}, 
and  yet  a  good  sort  of  a  fellow,  too,  who  had  professed 
warm  friendship  for  me,  and  had  a  thousand  opportunities 
to  give  me  a  lift,  but  deserted  me  when  I  was  down, 
played  his  game  with  his  wonted  smartness.  Meeting  me 
on  the  street,  he  shook  my  hand,  said  warmly  enough, 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  23 

but  not  a  shade  too  warmly,  "  Congratulate  you,  Moses," 
and  walked  on.  It  was  not  in  the  least  overdone,  one 
way  or  the  other.  For  weeks  I  did  not  lay  eyes'  on  him. 
But  I  knew  my  man.  In  due  time  he  came,  not  in 
person,  but  through  his  agents  (men  he  fancied  had 
influence  with  me,  and  flattered  them  by  so  telling  them), 
with  the  most  cunning  and  insidious  propositions,  seem- 
ingly in  my  own  interest,  to  all  of  which  I  replied, 
calmly, — 

"  Tell  Ben  Brown  I  can  do  nothing  for  him  now." 
But  when  he  went  down  into  the  deepest  depths,  then 
I  came  to  him  and  lifted  him  up  as  high  as  it  was  possible 
ever  again  to  lift  him.  For  all  along  I  had  well  remem- 
bered how  kind  he  had  been  to  me  before  good  fortune 
had  hardened  him  into  adamant.  Moreover,  I  had  long 
known  that,  in  society  as  in  the  forest,  there  are  beasts 
of  prey  who  delight  to  lap  the  blood  of  the  gazelles  and 
springboks.  Rather  than  give  up  their  nuts  and  wine  for 
a  single  day,  these  human  tigers  would  crunch  the  bones 
of  their  best  friends,  yes,  of  their  own  fathers.  It  is  their 
nature.  They  cannot  help  it.  And  yet  tigers  are  very 
beautiful.* 

The  increase  of  general  destitution  around  me  in  the 
State,  and  indeed  over  the  whole  land,  after  I  became 
rich,  was  something  alarming.  I  was  beset  for  charity  on 
all  sides.  For  this  I  had  provided  years  before  when  put- 
ting myself  to  sleep  with  waking  dreams  of  what  I  would 
do  with  my  fifty  millions.  Accordingly  I  selected  Mr. 
Wm.  E.  Binford  [a  worthy,  good  man,  still  living.  A 
useful  citizen,  too.  There  are  now  said  to  be  more  Bin- 
fords  than  Smiths  in  Virginia — 1901]  as  my  almoner  for 
the  males,  and  for  the  females,  after  patient  inquiry  and 
research,  I  chose  a  powerful  widow  of  Culpeper.f  My 
selections  were  well  made.  Both  possessed  the  physical 
• 

*  The  older  I  get  the  more  toleration  I  have  for  healthy  rascals — but  a 
sickly  rogue  I  hate.  1879. 

f  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Bexley,  relict  of  the  late  Shiflett  Bexley,  an  able- 
bodied  and  excellent  woman.  She  died,  much  to  my  regret,  in  August 
last,  and  was  succeeded  by  Miss  Parthenope  Shanks,  a  raw-boned  and 
athletic  spinster,  who  I  fear  is  using  my  money  to  buy  up  some  feeble 
widower  for  a  husband.  But  this  I  would  not  say  openly,  for  I  have 
learned  to  fear  all  women.  1883. 


24  W&AT  I  DID  WITH 

strength,  the  natural  benevolence,  the  equable  tempera- 
ment, and  the  discretion  indispensable  to  their  trying 
offices.  -By  saving  me  a  world  of  annoyance  they  earned 
my  lasting  gratitude,  and  so  well  and  wisely  did  they  dis- 
charge their  duties  that  they  became  the  best-loved  people 
in  Virginia.  All  minor  charities  were  referred  to  them. 
Special  cases,  and  they  were  not  a  few,  I  reserved  for  my- 
self. 

[Wealth  acquaints  one  with  a  world  of  poverty  which 
otherwise  would  never  have  been  known.  Worse  still, 
they  seem  to  be  poor  who  once  appeared  in  easy  circum- 
stances. It  is  very  sad.  And  yet  I  love  to  be  sad.  I  was 
always  sad,  very  sad.  1888.] 

My  immediate  kin,  whether  by  blood  or  marriage,  were 
amply  provided  for,  perhaps  too  amply.  Little  or  no 
harm  befell  those  of  mature  age,  but  in  the  second  and 
third  generations  I  had  much  cause  to  repent  my  benevo- 
lence. Call  it  that,  in  the  sense  of  well-wishing,  because 
I  am  not  benevolent  otherwise.  Some  of  the  girls  became 
the  prey  of  fortune-hunters,  and  not  a  few  of  the  boys 
went  heels-over-head  to  the  devil.  Anticipating  this,  I 
was  well  steeled  against  their  "troubles  when  they  came, 
but  confess  that  the  repeated  applications  for  assistance 
from  the  ne'er-do-weels  fretted  me  so  that  I  almost  longed 
to  regain  the  quietude  of  poverty.  Yet,  what  could  I  do? 
Upon  occasion  I  could  shut  the  purse-strings  as  tight  as 
any  man,  but  if  I  didn't  help  them  their  parents  or  grand- 
parents would ;  and,  as  I  was  so  much  more  able  to  bear 
the  burden  than  they  were,  I  signed  many  a  check  with 
more  of  a  snort  than  a  sigh.  Truly,  "  if  riches  increase, 
so  do  they  that  consume  them,"  as  the  Psalmist  saith. 
My  bed  was  not  all  of  roses  by  any  means.  The  world 
went  not  as  I  would  fain  have  made  it  go  with  my  millions. 

That  my  own  children  did  not  share  the  fate  of  so  many 
of  their  kinsfolk  was  due  to  the  good  sense,  the  patient 
watchfulness  and  determination  of  their  excellent  mother. 
No  credit  is  due  me,  for  the  simple  reason  that  my  mind 
was  so  occupied  with  other  matters  that  household  cares 
were  left  perforce  to  the  dear,  capable  hands  which  had 
always  controlled  them.  My  children  were  good  children. 
When  they  reached  manhood  and  womanhood  my  affairs 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  25 

had  assumed  such"%.  shape,  and  my  schemes  were  in  a  state 
of  such  forwardness,  that  I  could  devote  myself,  in  a  great 
measure,  to  the  heavenliest  of  delights — the  doing  of  good 
where  it  was  needed  in  a  way  that  made  it  appear  to  come 
suddenly  from  the  skies.  In  this  my  children  and  their 
mother  aided  me  signally,  each  vying  with  the  other  in 
displaying  tact,  delicacy,  and  wisdom.  One  of  my  grand- 
daughters discovered  unquestionable  genius  for  these 
"sky-surprises,"  as  we  called  them,  and  so  extraordinary 
were  her  inventions,  and  so  discreet  her  gifts,  that  I  think 
it  not  immodest  in  me  to  say  that  during  her  lifetime, 
which  was  all  too  brief,  more  good  was  done  in  a  more 
delighting  and  oftentimes  enrapturing  manner  than  in  all 
the  other  years  of  my  life  put  together. 


THIRD   INSTALLMENT. 

Fits  of  Pride — How  cured — A  Sneaking  Heart-Devil — The  Pleasure  of 
Giving — Some  Schoolmarms — Ham.  Chamberlayne — Deacon  Handy — 
"  The  Native  Virginian" — Numerous  Widows — Colonel  McDonald — 
Billy  Christian — Trick  on  a  Fat  Doctor,  etc. 

FITS  of  pride,  more  from  the  consciousness  of  power 
than  the  conceit  of  riches,  attacked  me  from  time  to  time. 
These  I  could  cure  with  the  greatest  ease  and  certainty  by 
promptly  shutting  up  my  business  office  and  going  out  into 
the  woods.  If  the  weather  were  not  too  bitter,  I  would 
go  even  in  midwinter.  -What  comes  out  of  the  speech- 
less trees,  up  from  the  bubbling  waters,  and  down  from 
the  deep  heaven,  I  cannot  tell ;  how  the  sweet  influences 
of  nature  operate  upon  the  vanity-swollen  spirit  I  cannot 
tell.  But  I  do  know,  and  it  is  all  I  can  tell  about  it,  that 
on  my  return  from  the  forest  I  was  no  more  humble  than 
a  tree  is  humble,  and  no  more  proud ;  simple,  natural, 
healthful,  and  you  may  add  helpful,  as  a  tree  is  helpful  to 
give  shade  to  the  fawn  or  shelter  to  the  birds ;  that  I  was, 
and  that  is  all  I  was.  Try  the  forest  for  an  hour  or  two, 
my  opulent  friend. 


26  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

Something  very  much  more  crafty,  creeping,  and  villain- 
ous than  the  ordinary  vanity  of  wealth  assailed  me  over 
and  again.  It  was  what  the  theologians,  if  I  do  not  mis- 
understand them,  call  spiritual  pride — Pharisaism.  Going 
along  the  street  I  would  have  to  haul  myself  short  up,  for 
while  my  heart  would  be  floating  in  a  delicious  warm-bath 
of  self-love  my  heart  would  be  saying,  "You  certainly 
are  one  of  the  best  men  that  ever  lived  in  this  world  !" 

I  wonder,  as  my  pen  traces  this  very  word  "world,"  if 
my  readers  will  believe  me  when  I  tell  them  that  in  my 
dream  about  riches  I  had  foreseen  and  provided  for  this 
cunningest  and  vilest  of  all  the  devils  that  sneak  into  the 
human  soul  ?  It  was  even  so,  whether  they  believe  it  or 
not. 

"  But  why  do  you  tell  it  but  to  make  out  that  you  are 
the  best  man  in  the  world?" 

Partly  to  show  that  the  imagination,  by  carefully  going 
over  for  years  and  years  the  possibilities  of  a  given  situa- 
tion, may  realize  even  its  most  unpleasant  details,  but 
more  to  remind  you,  my  friend,  that  in  a  small  way  you 
have  yourself  been  plagued  by  this  identical  devil.  Own 
up,  now.  Haven't  you? 

Lest  it  be  inferred,  in  spite  of  my  disclaimer,  that  I  was 
a  "mighty  good  man,"  let  me  hasten  to  say  that  I  was 
not  one  of  those  unpardonably  excellent  worthies  who  do 
not  permit  their  right  hand  to  know  what  their  left  hand 
doeth.  No,  indeed  !  Charles  Lamb  thought  that  the 
greatest  pleasure  in  life  was  to  do  good  by  stealth,  and 
have  it  found  out  by  accident.  Well,  there  is  something 
in  that,  provided  the  party  to  whom  the  good  is  done  is 
comparatively  a  stranger  to  you.  "But  in  the  case  of  friends, 
I  always  took  care  that  they  found  out  (not  always  by  ac- 
cident either)  that  I  was  the  fellow  who  had  done  the  good 
deed.  Not  for  the  world  would  I  have  missed  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  their  pleasure,  and  of  knowing  that  they  knew  I 
knew  the  source  from  which  their  pleasure  came.  I  wanted 
to  see  it  in  their  eyes,  and  feel  it  come  back  straight  and 
warm  into  my  own  eyes  and  heart.  In  a  word,  I  wanted 
to  be  loved,  and,  above  all,  I  wanted  to  be  loved  by  those 
I  loved  best.  That  was  life  in  its  fullness ;  that  was  the 
charm  of  wealth. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


27 


To  know  that  riches  enabled  my  children  to  escape  the 
myriad  pangs  that  beset  my  own  clouded  and  poverty- 
stricken  boyhood  and  early  manhood,  when  one  is  most 
capable  of  enjoying  and  giving  enjoyment,  was  a  great 
deal  to  me.  But  more,  far  more,  was  it  to  know  that  they 
could  feel  the  warmth  and  brilliancy  of  their  sunlit  morn- 
ing reflected  back  from  the  faces  of  those  whom  they  had 
befriended  and  made  even  happier  than  themselves;  that 
is,  if  it  be  true  that  it  is  better  to  give  than  to  receive, 
which  I  much  doubt,  because  the  giver  can  never  surprise 
himself  in  giving,  and  the  "sky-surprise,"  as  I  have 
already  intimated,  is  as  near  as  can  be  the  coming  down 
from  heaven  of  something  direct  from  God.  And  what 
can  be  better  than  that?  Don't  think  me  impious  if  I 
sometimes  question  myself  as  to  how  it  may  be  with  Him 
who  can  never  be  surprised  by  receiving  what  He  longed 
to  get,  but  never  dreamed  He  would  obtain,  and  to  whom 
nothing,  literally  nothing,  can  ever  be  given  ;  since  from 
the  infinite  wearisome  beginning  He  hath  had  all  things. 

I  have  now,  I  believe,  finished  all  my  twaddle  about 
matters  purely  personal,  and,  after  narrating  a  few  specific 
donations  which  gave  me  unusual  pleasure,  will  proceed  at 
once  to  detail  those  public  benefactions  which  I  may  rea- 
sonably presume  to  be  of  general  interest. 

During  our  entire  married  life  Mrs.  Adams  had  mani- 
fested a  strong  fondness  for  a  half-dozen  or  so  of  Virginia 
schoolmarms.  My  yielding  and  obedient  disposition  made 
me  a  meek  participator  in  this  fondness,  and  the  conse- 
quence was  a  serious  injury  to  the  youth  of  Virginia  by 
robbing  them  of  their  teachers.  But,  to  atone  for  the 
loss,  a  number  of  middle-aged  men,  who  had  not  hith- 
erto been  able  to  perceive  how  closely  their  happiness 
was  bound  up  with  the  aforesaid  marms,  became  the  most 
radiant  and  bounding  of  husbands,  bestowing  on  me 
whenever  I  chanced  to  meet  them  a  cataract  of  gratitude 
which  made  the  back  streets  more  than  ever  desirable  as 
a  route  to  my  office.  On  the  part  of  the  marms,  truth 
compels  me  to  say  there  was  not  quite  so  copious  a  down- 
pour of  thankfulness.  One  of  these  went  so  far  as  to  tell 
me  frankly  that  she  wished  I  had  kept  my  plaguey  dollars 
to  myself,  so  that  she  might  have  opened  a  boarding- 


28  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

house  as  soon  as  she  got  old  and  ugly  enough,  and  so 
have  been  free  as  the  wild  gazelle  on  Judah's  hills.  [I 
do  not  believe  that  boarding-house  keepers  enjoy  any 
large  freedom.]  But  when  I  remembered  how  jaded  the 
poor  souls  had  looked  at  the  close  of  their  sessions,  and 
the  evident  pleasure  they  took  in  new  bonnets  and  in  the 
coat-tailed  thing,  all  their  own,  that  dangled  behind  them 
as  they  entered  church,  I  could  not  repent  me  of  the  evil 
I  had  done. 

Hampden  Chamberlayne  having  a  fondness,  and  not  a 
little  fitness,  for  the  editorial  calling,  I  thought  to  sur- 
prise and  please  him  by  presenting  him  with  a  couple  of 
newspaper  toys  in  New  York  (the  Times  and  World,  if  I 
remember  aright,  which  I  hoped  he  would  consolidate 
under  the  name  of  the  Worldly  Times},  but  he  surprised 
and  enraged  me  by  promptly  selling  them  out,  and  estab- 
lishing a  semi-weekly  in  Richmond,  his  State  and  its 
capital  being  very  dear  to  him.  So  successful  was  he, 
that  some  time  early  in  the  8o's  he  was  sent  to  the  United 
States  Senate,  where,  against  my  earnest  advice,  he  dis- 
tinguished himself  by  his  efforts  against  centralization, 
already  too  far  gone  to  admit  of  hopeful  opposition. 

[A  worthy,  good  man,  talented  beyond  question.  The 
War  of  the  German  Uprising  in  '88  was  no  sooner  begun 
than  he  joined  the  army  at  St.  Louis,  rose  rapidly  to  the 
rank  of  General  of  Division,  was  captured  after  the  sack- 
ing of  Philadelphia,  and  instead  of  being  shot,  as  a  brave 
soldier  should  have  been,  was  guillotined  in  front  of 
the  Imperial  Palace,  and  immediately  under  the  eye  of 
Ulysses  II.*  A  serious  loss,  not  only  to  the  army,  but 
to  the  cause  of  liberty.  1895.]  [My  mind  is  now  being 
made  up  that  the  friends  of-liberty  should  have  no  heads.] 

No  amount  of  money  could  keep  me  from  scribbling, 
and  no  amount  of  money  could  insure  me  against  the 
rejection  of  my  articles  by  editors  who  presumed  to 
know  better  than  myself  the  style  of  articles  best  suited 
to  their  papers,  and  so  being  obliged  to  have  a  scape-pipe 
for  my  foolishness,  I,  with  extreme  difficulty,  persuaded 


*  The  true  name  of  this  person  was  Frederick  Dent  Grant.     A  Vir- 
ginian named  M.  was  his  Minister  of  War. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


29 


Stofer  and  Scott  to  part  with  the  Piedmont  Virginian 
and  the  Gordonsville  Gazette.  Stofer  did  not  consent 
until  I  bargained  to  pay  him  one  thousand  dollars  a  year 
for  his  services,  and  agreed  that  he  should  sleep  at  Orange 
Court-House  every  night,  which  he  did,  purchasing  a  neat 
horse  and  buggy  for  that  purpose.  Consolidating  the  two 
journals  under  the  name  of  the  Native  Virginian,  at  Gor- 
donsville (which  had  increased  to  four  thousand  souls 
under  the  stimulus  of  the  Chester  Gap  Railroad,  and  the 
unremitting  immigration  exertion  of  Digges),  Stofer  and 
I  published  the  paper  there  for  a  good  long  time,  afford- 
ing snack-buyers  an  abundance  of  cheap,  but  not  very 
clean,  wrapping-paper,  and  annoying  the  editors  through- 
out the  State  by  incessant  personalities  and  political  in- 
consistencies. Charging  nothing  for  subscription,  or  for 
advertisements,  except  in  the  case  of  patent  medicines 
and  circuses,  we  gradually  ran  up  our  list  to  three  hun- 
dred and  fifty,  including  exchanges  and  copies  given  to 
friends  on  the  cars. 

The  hearts  of  numerous  widows,  ay !  and  married 
women,  and  maids  too,  sang  with  joy  after  I  got  my 
money.  I  went  all  the  way  to  Kansas  to  find  a  widow 
of  whom  I  had  long  lost  sight,  but  never  for  an  instant 
forgotten.  And  lo !  she  was  married,  and  so  were  two  of 
her  daughters.  But  that  circumstance  did  not  daunt  me 
a  bit.  I  hadn't  come  all  that  way  to  return  with  my 
finger  in  my  mouth,  I  tell  you.  Help  I  would,  and  did. 
There,  too,  I  encountered  a  person  named  Christian, 
grizzled  and  furrowed  by  plenteous  hard  knocks,  but 
warm  and  true  as  of  yore.  In  vain  I  tried  to  win  him 
and  his  back  to  old  Virginia,  so  that  we  twain  might 
roam  once  more  the  wooded  hills  above  the  James,  as 
in  the  halcyon  days  agone.  "  No  ;  he  had  outlived  that 
life.  He  could  not  bear  to  see  the  change  in  his  dear 
native  State.  Please  God,  he  would  teach  his  boys  that 
a  man  could  die  clean-handed  and  upright-hearted  in  the 
midst  of  roughs,  villains,  thieves,  and  dogs."  There, 
then,  after  a  charming  two-months'  visit,  I  left  him  with 
greenbacks  enough  to  brighten  his  old  age  and  give  his 
children  a  good  go-off  in  life ;  and  I  saw  him  no  more. 

Deacon  Moses  P.  Handy,  being  the  son  of  a  most 
3* 


3° 


WHAT  I  DID  WITH 


worthy  Patriarch  and  Presbyterian  preacher,  and  having 
done  me  many  a  good  turn,  I  did  something  in  return 
for  him. 

[NOTE. — For  the  matter  of  turn,  all  the  editors  and 
reporters  in*  Virginia  and  Maryland,  and  a  good  many  in 
Tennessee,  and  others  in  other  States  (take  them  "by 
and  large,"  they  are  the  best  class  of  people  in  the 
world),  had  been  kind  to  me,  and  I  remembered  every 
one  of  them  to  the  extent  of  one  thousand  dollars  in 
gold,  a  house  and  lot,  a  barrel  of  whisky,  a  box  of 
cigars,  a  set  of  open-back  shirts,  by  Spence,  *  and  a 
basket  of  champagne  for  their  wives,  apiece.] 

Deacon  Handy  being  enough  of  an  old  and  new  school 
Presbyterian,  and  also  enough  of  a  Baptist  and  Metho- 
dist, for  the  purpose,  I  attempted  to  gather  unto  him  all 
the  religious  papers  of  Richmond,  satisfied  that  he  would 
so  combine  them  as  to  make  out  of  them  a  colossal  for- 
tune. Sectarian  influences  easily  thwarted  me  and  my 
money,  and  consequently  the  good  deacon  had  to  scuffle 
along  with  the  combined  evening  papers  as  best  he  could. 
Summoning  Chesterman  to  his  aid,  he  made  so  good  thing 
of  it  that  he  was  able  Jo  bring  all  the  boys  under  cover, 
including  even  wild  Moral  Donater.f 

Colonel  James  McDonald  for  twenty  years  had  exhib- 
ited so  persistent  a  purpose  to  help  me  on  to  the  full 
measure  of  his  ability  that  I  was  bound  by  natural  law 
to  hate  him.  I  did  not  give  him  one  single  cent.  But, 
on  going  to  the  bank  one  day,  Mr.  Davenport  said  to 
him, — 

"  Colonel,  interest  has  been  piling  up  here  for  three 
or  four  years.  Are  you  going  to  let  it  run  on  indefi- 
nitely?" 

' '  Interest !    What  interest  ?' ' 

Then   for  the  first  time  he  discovered  that  his  three 


*  Haberdasher  of  the  period.  Worthy  good  man.  Remarkable  man. 
At  the  age  of  seventy-two  he  could  turn  a  double-back  somersault,  shears 
in  hand,  and  cut  out  a  swallow-tail  coat  before  he  lit  upon  the  ground. 
Saw  him  do  it  with  my  own  eye  two  times  hand-running  immediately 
after  dinner. 

•(•  Geo.  Wilde,  a  model  reporter  of  the  period, — most  astonishing  and 
indescribable  partly  human  being  living  at  that  time. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  31 

children  had  to  their  credit  rather  more  money  than  was 
good  for  them.  They  pulled  through,  though,  thanks  to 
their  excellent  training,  enjoying  life,  and  making  citi- 
zens of  whom  (the  community,  and  especially  the  poor 
people,  might  well  be  proud.* 

There  was  an  old  doctor  in  Middleburg  whose  name 
and  face  were  associated  with  some  of  the  most  sorrowful 
and  sacred  memories  of  my  life.  Thirty  or  forty  years 
of  arduous  country  practice  had  obtained  for  him  the 
unbounded  esteem  and  affection  of  scores  of  people,  who 
were  too  poor  to  compensate  him,  if,  indeed,  monetary 
compensation  could  have  repaid  him  for  all  he  had  done 
for  them.  Him  I  placed  upon  his  pins  so  firmly  that  there 
was  no  danger  of  his  ever  being  shaken,  demanding  only 
that  he  and  his  dear  wife  should  make  us  a  real  old  Vir- 
ginia visit  once  a  year.  This  they  unfailingly  did,  and 
the  way  in  which  I  used  to  beat  the  old  man  at  backgam- 
mon was  something  for  him  to  brood  over  in  a  mildly 
vengeful  fashion  during  the  remaining  eleven  months  of 
the  year. 

There  was  another  doctor,  not  quite  so  old  as  my 
Middleburg  friend,  but  much  more  rotund.  He  had 
placed  me  under  such  obligations  that  for  a  long  time  I 
had  not  been  able  to  look  him  straight  in  the  face.  It 
was  imperatively  incumbent  upon  me  to  proceed  for  him, 
and  for  him  I  proceeded  in  my  own  style.  One  winter 
evening,  just  as  he  had  seated  himself  at  his  table,  on 
which  a  superb  dinner  was  served,  and  had  paved  the 
way  to  a  firsf-rate  talk  with  the  particular  friends  around 
him,  the  door-bell  rang. 

'  Man  want  to  see  you." 

'Tell  him  I'm  at  dinner." 

'  Say  he  'bleest  to  see  you." 

'  Let  him  wait,  then." 

'  Say  he  'bleest  to  see  you  right  now." 

'Tell  him  I  am — at — dinner!"  thundered  the  doctor. 

*The  family  removed  to  France  in  '84,  and  one  of  the  sons,  or  grand- 
sons, named  Dudley,  I  think,  made  such  reputation  in  the  horrible  war 
of  French  Vengeance,  as  it  was  very  properly  called,  that  he  was  ele- 
vated to  the  rank  of  Marshal  (recalling  Macdonald  of  Wagram)  and 
Due  de  Berlin. 


3 2  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

"  Say  he  don'  keer  if  you  is  ;  he  got  a  wheelbarrer 
full  o'  silver  and  gold  out  dar,  and  it  a  rainin' ;  he  bound 
to  see  you." 

"Burbage,  hand  me  that  stick  !" 

His  son  having  handed  him  the  cane,  the  doctor  was 
about  to  bring  it  down  with  all  the  force  of  his  massive 
frame  upon  his  servant,  when  the  guests,  rising  with  one 
accord,  restrained  him. 

"Fo'  Gawd,  sir,  de  man  do  say  de  money  ar  dar;  / 
ain't  a  lyin',  sir,  ef  /foar." 

To  shorten  the  story,  the  money  was  "dar,"  sure 
enough.  Night  had  fallen;  it  was  raining;  the"  banks 
were  closed,  and  so  were  the  brokers'  offices. 

The  doctor  was  furious;  dinner  getting  cold,  and  no- 
where to  put  all  that  money.  For  a  moment  his  brain, 
large  as  it  was,  was  utterly  at  fault — for  a  moment  o'nly. 

"Here,  boy,  dump  that  stuff  upon  the  floor  of  my 
office.  My  son,  run  and  hire  a  section  of  artillery  to 
stay  up  all  night  and  take  care  of  it.  Give  them  what- 
ever they  ask;  hang  me  if  I'll  miss  my  dinner  for  forty 
thousand  wheelbarrows  full  of  silver  ! ' ' 

It  took  half  a  decanter  of  the  best  sherry  to  quiet  him 
down,  but  then  he  forgave  me  (there  was  no  mistaking 
the  source  of  the  annoying  present),  and  his  guests  say 
he  never  talked  more  charmingly  in  his  whole  life.* 

*  There  was  not  much  money  after  all,  the  amount  by  actual  count, 
as  I  was  told,  being  only  twenty-six  thousand  four  hundred  and  twelve 
dollars.  An  odd  accident  occurred.  Just  before  day  the  fire-bell  on 
Third  Street  rang,  and  the  men  in  charge  of  the  cannon  becoming 
alarmed,  fired  their  pieces,  breaking  all  the  panes  of  glass  for  several 
squares  around.  Of  course  I  settled  the  bill ;  the  second  time  I  had  to 
pay  for  window-panes,  the  first  being  in  Prince  Edward  in  1841-2,  or 
thereabouts. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  33 


FOURTH    INSTALLMENT. 

Laura  Park — Sneers  at  Jones  and  Adams — The  Great  Reservoir — New 
Market-House — Grand  Celebration — Arrival  of  Old  Lynchburgers — 
Ballard  Kidd  and  Harriet  Rouse — Works  at  Curdsville,  etc. — Rage  of 
a  baffled  Rich  Man — College  for  Old  Virginia  Fiddlers,  etc. 

HAVING  finished  the  outline  of  matters  of  a  personal 
nature,  I  now  proceed  to  detail  at  some  length  the  larger 
works  of  a  public  character  in  which  myself  and  my 
agents  were  engaged  for  so  many  years.  And  first  for 
Lynchburg. 

"  The  object  of  Calvin  Jones's  repeated  horseback  rides 
was  to  obtain  a  site  for  a  park.  This,  after  much  nego- 
tiation and  not  a  little  finesse,  he  secured  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  low  range  of  mountains  called  Candler's,  at  a  dis- 
tance of  several  miles  from  town.  How  many  acres  were 
embraced  in  the  original  purchase  I  do  not  now  recall, 
but  with  the  additions  made  to  it  in  after-years  Laura 
Park*  (so  I  named  it)  contains,  as  is  well  known,  within 
a  fraction  of  four  thousand  acres.  Everybody  cried  out 
that  the  distance  from  town  was  an  insuperable  obstacle ; 
that  poor  people  could  never  enjoy  it ;  that  only  the 
owners  of  horses  and  carriages  would  ever  go  there ;  om- 
nibuses and  other  hired  vehicles  would  impose  too  great 
a  tax;  that  Adams  always  was  a  fool,  Jones  was  a  fool, 
and  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  notable  exhibition  of  the 
absurdities  into  which  well-meaning  men  were  sure  to  fall 
whenever  they  undertook  to  execute  work  that  required 
practical  sense.  Jones  went  serenely  on,  year  after  year, 
clearing,  grading,  grottoing,  water-falling,  laking,  bridg- 
ing, and  beautifying  generally,  until  people  were  amazed 
and  almost  ready  to  hang  him  because  he  did  not  formally 
open  the  park  to  the  public.  Crowds  went  out  on  foot, 
on  horseback,  in  buggies,  hacks,  etc.,  to  look  at  and  ad- 
mire the  work  as  it  progressed.  Li  very -stable  men  reaped 

*  Named  for  Miss  Laura  N.  D.  Christian — my  sweetheart. 
B* 


34 


WHAT  I  DID  WITH 


a  rich  harvest,  and  looked  forward  to  a  harvest  still  richer 
when  the  park  should  be  completed.  Something  was 
whispered  about  the  right  of  way  which  Jones  had  bought 
for  a  road  of  his  own  from  town  to  the  park,  and  endless 
were  the  sneers  and  innuendoes. 

"  Nice  man,  that  Jones  !  Oh,  he's  sharp.  He  ought 
to  be  satisfied  with  his  salary,  his  commissions  on  con- 
tracts, his  jobs  of  all  kinds;  but  that  ain't  Jones,  you 
know.  He  wants  a  snug  income  of  his  own  after  all  his 
jobs  are  played  out.  He's  a  keener,  Jones  is  !" 

All  of  a  sudden  Jones,  having  made  sufficient  headway 
in  the  park,  put  several  thousand  men  at  work,  and  in  an 
incredibly  short  time  a  quadruple-track  road,  with  foot- 
ways and  perfectly  macadamized  drives  on  either  side  of 
the  railways  and  between  the  double  tracks,  with  elms  and 
other  shade-trees  planted  at  suitable  intervals,  was  finished, 
and  the  announcement  made  in  the  daily  papers  that  cars 
drawn  by  dummy-engines  and  driven  by  compressed  air 
would  run  every  ten  minutes  to  the  park  free  of  charge. 

There  was  a  change  of  tune  instantly. 

"  Don't  you  remember  my  telling  you  when  Jones  was 
a  clerk  in  Robinson  Stabler's  drug-store,  and  Adams  was 
loafing  around  there  doing  nothing,  that  both  of  them 
were  remarkable  men  ?  Why,  yes  you  do  !  I  can  tell 
you  the  very  place  where  we  were  standing  when  I  told 
you.  It  just  shows,  though,  how  different  men  of  genius 
are  from  ordinary  people.  They  never  do  things  in  the 
way  you  and  I  would  do  them.  But  haven't  we  got  a  mag- 
nificent park?  It  beats  Central  Park  all  hollow.  I  just 
tell  you  old  Lynchburg  has  got  something  to  be  proud  of." 

"Yes,  the  park  will  do  very  well  as  it  is,  and  it  will  be 
a  great  deal  better  when  Jones  has  completed  his  improve- 
ments on  the  sides  and  tops  of  the  mountains ;  but  that 
reservoir  business  strikes  me  as  the  craziest  notion  that 
ever  entered  Moses  Adams's  head ;  and  what  he  has 
bought  all  the  land  in  and  around  Scuffletown  for,  I  can't 
imagine." 

I  (or  rather  Jones  for  me)  had  bought  the  whole  of 
Reservoir  Square,  and  a  large  force  in  addition  to  that 
employed  at  the  park  was  engaged  in  laying  a  massive 
granite  foundation  all  around  from  Dr.  Payne's  corner  to 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


35 


Mrs.  Turner's,  the  Methodist  church  and  the  dwelling- 
houses  having  been  already  demolished.  Leaving  the  old 
reservoir  intact,  Jones  ran  up  his  granite  wall  to  the 
height  of  one  hundred  feet,  forming  a  grand  structure  of 
five  stories,  counting  the  floor  of  the  original  reservoir  as 
one,  each  story  supported  by  arched  masonry  of  the  most 
solid  and  perfect  workmanship,  and  each  floor  being  in 
fact  an  additional  reservoir  ten  feet  in  depth,  extending, 
as  did  that  at  the  bottom,  over  the  entire  square,  with  the 
exception  of  some  forty  or  fifty  feet  between  the  outer 
and  inner  walls,  which  were  filled  in  all  the  way  to  the 
top  with  arches,  upon  which  the  stone  flooring  of  the  col- 
onnades was  placed.  There  were  transverse  walls  and 
arches  wherever  needed  to  give  strength  to  the  mighty 
structure.  My  knowledge  of  architecture  is  far  too  lim- 
ited to  enable  me  to  describe  technically  this  reservoir,  or 
collection  of  reservoirs  elevated  one  above  the  other,  but 
from  what  has  been  said  the  reader  may  form  some  idea 
of  its  appearance.  By  flights  of  steps  the  successive  floors 
were  easily  reached,  each  ascension  giving  a  broader  view 
of  the  picturesque  scenery  around  Lynchburg,  until  the 
battlemented  summit  was  attained,  from  which  the  pano- 
rama was  as  fine  as  well  could  be.  Under  the  colonnades 
the  townspeople,  and  especially  the  lads  and  lasses  and 
the  children,  found  a  charming  promenade  in  good  and 
even  bad  weather,  except  when  the  wind  drove  the  rain 
far  under  the  arches.  To  strangers  and  visitors  the  reser- 
voir constituted  the  chief  attraction  of  the  growing  city, 
dividing  honors  with  the  park,  and  generally  eclipsing  it, 
owing  to  its  being  within  the  corporate  limits  and  so  ac- 
cessible. The  much  more  powerful  machinery  needed  at 
the  pump-house  was  made  under  a  special  contract  in 
Lynchburg,  the  house  containing  it  was  enlarged  and 
beautified,  and  the  two  made  another  attraction  to  the 
city. 

For  a  time  after  the  water  was  pumped  into  the  higher 
reservoirs  (enough  being  always  kept  in  them  to  furnish 
an  ample  supply  for  the  houses  in  the  highest  parts  of  the 
city),  the  bad  boys,  who  had  not  then  ceased  to  abound 
in  Lynchburg,  amused  themselves  by  throwing  sticks, 
stones,  etc.,  into  the  water,  and  by  sailing  miniature  boats 


36  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

thereon,  but  this  was  speedily  ended  by  a  couple  of  police- 
men, detailed  to  guard  the  place;  after  which  it  became, 
and  has  ever  since  remained,  a  delightful  resort.  Much  has 
been  said  about  the  Roman  baths,  aqueducts,  and  amphi- 
theatres, but  I  doubt  if  the  world  contains  better  masonry 
than  this  same  reservoir,  the  proportions  of  which  are  as 
graceful  as  its  workmanship  is  solid  and  enduring.  Jones 
prided  himself  upon  the  park,  but  for  my  part  I  shall  always 
consider  the  reservoir  as  the  true  monument  of  his  taste 
and  genius. 

In  my  youth,  when  engaged  as  local  editor  of  the 
Lynchburg  Virginian,  I  had  exerted  my  entire  battery  of 
derision  against  the  market-house,*  a  hideous  affair,  which 
would  long  since  have  passed  out  of  the  memory  of  men 
but  for  the  large  and  very  perfect  photographs  of  it  in  its 
different  aspects,  each  more  horrible,  if  possible,  than  the 
other,  which  I  had  taken,  and  which  remain  to  this  day  in 
the  new  market,  as  unimpeachable  evidence  of  the  crude 
architecture  of  the  early  age  of  Lynchburg.  The  new 
market,  in  the  form  of  a  cross,  extends  under  Court-house 
Hill  from  Church  Street  to  the  foot  of  the  hill  on  which 
many  years  ago  stood  the  residence  of  Mr.  Charles  L. 
Mosby,  and  from  what  used  to  be  called  Tan-yard  Alley 
to  a  point  about  a  square  beyond  West  or  Cocke  Street. 
Its  width  is  fifty  feet,  height  twenty  feet,  except  in  the 
centre,  where  the  dome  or  rotunda  rises  to  the  height  of 
sixty  feet.  Excavated  throughout  from  the  naked  rock, 
arched  and  cemented  so  admirably  that  not.  a  drop  of 
water  ever  percolates  the  vaulted  roof;  not  whitewashed, 
but  painted  from  end  to  end  with  the  best  quality  of  white 
zinc,  and  paneled  in  simple  but  elegant  designs,  brilliantly 
illuminated  day  and  night  with  gas,  of  an  equable  tem- 
perature nearly  the  year  round,  it  is  at  once  the  most 
commodious,  convenient,  comfortable,  and  useful  market- 
house  in  America.  Large  as  the  city  became  after  the 
great  iron-factories  were  established,  its  size,  its  central 
location,  and  the  fact  of  its  not  being  in  the  way  of  any 
above-ground  improvements,  gained  for  it  such  esteem 

*  The  old  man  seems  to  have  been  wholly  ignorant  that  a  lovely  new 
market-house  was  erected  as  early  as  1873. — Ed.  Whig. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


37 


among  all  classes,  that  no  other  public  market  has  been 
thought  of,  and  but  few  green-groceries  or  private  markets 
have  been  started  even  upon  the  outskirts  of  the  city. 

[The  inauguration  of  the  New  and  the  destruction  of 
the  Old  Market-house  was  made  the  occasion  of  a  grand 
celebration.  A  vast  procession  of  former  residents  of 
Lynchburg,  headed  by  Mr.  Frank  Morrison,  in  a  big  over- 
coat, lantern,  umbrella,  and  boots,  who  bore  a  large  square 
banner,  with  the  gilt  device,  "WE  COME!"  arrived  in  a 
special  train  and  marched  in  solid  phalanx  up  Bridge 
Street.  Conspicuous  among  them  were  Colonels  Shields, 
McDonald,  and  R.  F.  Walker,  of  Richmond ;  Mr.  Daniel 
H.  London,  of  New  York;  Mr.  W.  H.  Ryan,  of  Balti- 
more; Mr.  S.  V.  Reid,  of  Cincinnati;  Judge  D.  A.  Wil- 
son, of  New  Orleans;  Mr.  J.  William  Royall,  of  St.  Louis; 
Mr.  Mike  Connell,  of  Memphis;  and  Senators  Withers, 
Thurman,  and  Allen,  of  Washington.  President  Grant 
was  indisposed,  and  could  not  come.  At  the  head  of 
Bridge  Street  the  procession  was  met  by  Dr.  H.  Grey 
Latham,  clad  in  a  complete  suit  of  armor.  Behind  him 
were  the  clergy,  the  Knights  Templar,  the  schools,  public 
and  private,  the  fire  companies,  and  the  whole  populace. 
Dr.  L.'s  address  of  welcome  was  delivered  in  such  tones 
of  thunder  that  it  frightened  the  inhabitants  of  Amherst 
Court-House,  who  immediately  dispatched  a  company 
of  volunteers  to  the  city,  thinking  the  Confederacy  had 
broken  out  again.  Salvos  of  artillery  pealed  aloud,  and 
several  large  sand-blasts  were  set  off.  Mr.  A.  McDonald 
then  read  a  beautiful  poem  written  for  the  occasion  by  a 
distinguished  literary  lady  of  the  city.  The  proceedings 
closed  with  a  memorial  oration  by  myself.  When  I 
recalled  the  touching  circumstance  that  those  revered  citi- 
zens, B.  Kidd  and  R.  Jones,  had  derived  the  greater  part 
of  their  sustenance  from  the  Old  Market-house,  and  that 
the  maiden,  Rouse,  had  drawn  almost  her  entire  stock  of 
haslets  throughout  a  pure  and  prolonged  life  from  the 
butcher-blocks  of  that  same  market-house,  the  vast  con- 
course was  flooded  with  tears.  At  night  the  city  was  illu- 
minated, there  were  balls,  fire-works,  etc.,  etc.,  but  no 
whisky  or  profane  language.  A  full  account  of  everything 
appeared  in  the  papers  of  the  next  morning,  and  was  sub- 


3g  '    WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

sequently  printed  in  pamphlet  form,  copies  of  which  were 
eagerly  bought  up  by  the  New  England  Historical  Socie- 
ties, who  had  agents  on  the  spot.  Cuthbert,  of  the  New 
York  Herald,  made  an  intensely  interesting  report  of  the 
affair.  Copies  of  the  pamphlet  are  now  exceedingly  rare 
and  valuable.  I  know  of  but  one  in  Virginia,  and  that  is 
in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Thomas  H.  Wynne.  The  Virginia 
Historical  Society  has  offered  five  hundred  dollars  for  a 
duplicate,  and  an  eminent  Virginian  archaeologist  has  de- 
cided to  print  two  hundred  fac-simile  copies  for  exchange. 
Market-House  Memorial  Day  has  been  for  many  years  a 
legal  holiday  in  Lynchburg.  1900.] 

Simultaneously  with  the  constructions  in  and  near 
Lynchburg,  other  works  were  carried  on  in  Curdsville,  at 
the  Buckingham  Female  Institute,  in  Farmville,  Rich- 
mond, and  elsewhere.  To  my  lasting  regret,  Jones  could 
not  or  would  not  take  charge  of  the  more  important  of 
these  works.  I  begged  him  to  do  so,  but  he  said,  not 
without  truth,  that  I  had  given  him  as  much  as  he  could 
properly  attend  to  for  many  years,  and  that,  while  he 
cared  little  for  reputation  as  an  architect,  engineer,  and 
landscape  gardener,  he  did  desire  it  to  be  said  after  his 
death  that  what  he  had  undertaken  to  do  he  had  done 
really  well.  It  is  a  pity  that  others  in  my  employ  did 
not  share  Jones's  conscientiousness.  I  do  not  intend  to 
call  names,  nor  is  it  necessary  for  me  to  do  so  (the  works 
speak  for  themselves),  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  saying 
that  the  pain  I  often  experienced  in  the  failure  of  my^ 
schemes  to  insure  the  happiness  of  individuals  was  hardly 
ever  so  great  as  that  I  continually  felt  when  looking  at 
some  of  the  public  edifices  which  I  shall  shortly  mention.* 
Added  to  the  mortification  I  could  but  feel  in  thinking 
over  the  folly  of  my  selection  of  this  or  that  man  as  my 
agent,  and  to  the  rage  which  I  never  ceased  to  experience 
whenever  I  was  cheated  or  deceived,  was  the  intolerable 
sense  of  impotency  at  being  balked  in  my  plans  in  spite 
of  all  my  millions.  Though  I  had  counted  upon  all  this, 
and  though  I  had  steeled  myself  against  it  as  best  I  could 

*  I  have  concluded  not  to  mention.    Why  hurt  feelings  when  the  hurt- 
ing does  not  tend  in  the  least  to  remove  the  eye-sores  alluded  to  ? 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


39 


(saying  to  myself,  when  I  lay  dreaming  in  bed  about 
being  rich,  "Why,  even  Omnipotence  does  not  prevent 
the  world  from  going  incessantly  awry ;  and  what  can 
you  do  with  your  little  driblets  of  money?"),  I  felt  it 
much  the  same.  Oftentimes  I  was  so  incensed  and  out- 
raged that  I  determined  to  abandon  all  my  works  just  as 
they  stood,  or  to  leave  enough  money  to  complete  them 
after  a  fashion,  and  go  away  where  I  could  never  see  them 
more,  but  could  live  quietly  and  selfishly  all  to  myself. 
But,  somehow,  millions  do  not  make  a  man  free ;  he 
continues  a  slave  to  his  thought,  his  dream,  his  scheme, 
whatever  it  may  be,  hoping  in  spite  of  his  better  sense  for 
better  things,  and  having  put  his  hand  to  the  plow  goes 
trudging  along,  miserably  enough. 

At  Curdsville  I  bought  Baldwin's  big  brick  house  with 
the  farm  attached  to  it,  and,  moving  the  house  away  from 
the  allurements  of  the  main,  plain  road,  set  going  one  of 
the  sincerest  and  longest-cherished  desires  of  my  heart, 
to  wit :  a  college  for  the  education  of  Old  Virginia  fid- 
dlers. None  but  negroes  and  mulattoes  were  admitted  as 
students.  At  first,  owing  to  the  rapid  decay  of  material 
after  the  abolition  of  slavery,  there  was  a  good  deal  of 
difficulty  in  finding  a  suitable  president  and  professors, — 
men  who  had  never  been  contaminated  by  indulging  in 
operatic  airs,  but  who  understood  thoroughly  and  enjoyed 
only  the  real  Old  Virginia  jigs,  reels,  breakdowns,  and 
the  like — men  who  could  play  them  as  they  ought  to  be 
played,  with  fervor,  with  spirit,  and  the  proper  accentua- 
tion— in  fine,  men,  nigger  men,  who  could  and  habitually 
did  sling,  as  we  say,  a  nasty  bow.  And  by  nasty  I  do  not 
mean  nasty,  but  every  Virginian  knows  what  I  mean. 
George  Walker  was  the  first  president,  and  under  him 
were  three  professors  whose  names  entirely  escape  me. 
Not  that  there  was  any  real  need  for  so  many  teachers 
where  all  taught  the  same  thing,  but  that,  in  case  of  sick- 
ness or  death  or  the  calling  away  of  any  of  the  faculty  to  a 
big  dance  or  frolic,  the  course  of  instruction  might  not  be 
interrupted.  Thenumber of studentswas limited  to  twenty; 
everything,  including  food  and  clothing,  was  free,  and  no 
diploma  was  granted  until  the  student  had  completed  his 
three-years'  curriculum.  The  scholastic  year  ended  on 


40  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

Christmas  Eve,  and  the  commencement  exercises  (which 
wound  up  with  a  grand  ball  given  to  the  young  white 
people)  gave  rise  to  the  liveliest  excitement  in  all  the 
adjacent  counties ;  tickets  were  sought  for  with  the 
greatest  avidity,  and  the  written  accounts  of  the  proceed- 
ings, published  exclusively  in  the  Richmond  Whig,  were 
looked  forward  to  with  the  most  intense  anxiety,  and  read 
with  profound  interest  not  only  in  Virginia  but  through- 
out the  South  and  West.  Ten  thousand  extra  copies  of 
the  paper  were  always  struck  off  on  such  occasions,  and 
often  failed  to  meet  the  demand.  ' 


FIFTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Blessings  of  the  Fiddlers'  College — Dancing  vs.  Pure  Hugging — Course 
on  Fife  and  Tobacco-Horn — Blind  Billy — Buckingham  Female  In- 
stitute—  "Chennany''  and  "  Ant'ny  Over"  —  Langhorne's  Tavern, 
Ca  Ira,  New  Store,  Raine's  Tavern,  etc. — Spout  Spring,  Red  House, 
Pamplin's,  Tarwallet,  etc. — College  for  Old  Virginia  Cooks — Hamp- 
den  Sydney  College — Mosque  and  Shot-Tower  at  Burkeville. 

THE  benefit  to  be  derived  from  a  college  of  Virginia 
fiddlers  was  at  the  outset  the  subject  of  not  a  little  fun. 

"Adams,"  it  was  said,  "has  got  so  much  money  he 
don't  know  what  to  do  with  it.  The  thing  will  soon 
play  out  and  be  forgotten,  or  remembered  only  as  an- 
other instance  of  the  foolishness  of  rich  men.  The  money 
is  his  own,  though,  and  if  he  chooses  to  throw  it  away  in 
that  manner  it  is  his  own  lookout.  Pity  he  hasn't  sense 
enough  to  devote  it  to  some  charitable  object." 

What  is  commonly  known  as  charity  found  little  favor 
in  my  eyes,  and  as  for  the  objections  made  by  the  wise 
men  of  that  day,  they  had  been  foreseen  and  provided 
for  long  before  the  college  was- founded. 

Unbelievers  were  cured  in  this  way : 

After  the  college  had  been  in  operation  for  a  sufficient 
time  to  perfect  the  professors,  as  well  as  the  students,  in 
the  true  Virginia  sling  of  the  bow,  I  caused  tickets  of  invi- 
tation to  the  commencement  exercises  to  be  sent  to  a 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  4! 

number  of  Northern  belles,  who  never  in  their  lives  had 
danced  anything  but  the  so-called  round  dances, — waltzes, 
polkas,  mazourkas,  etc.  They  attended  (their  expenses 
being  paid,  indeed,  every  outlay  incident  to  the  com- 
mencement was  defrayed  out  of  the  ample  endowment), 
the  novelty  of  the  affair  attracting  them ;  but  before  they 
returned  home  the  fire,  the  life,  the  inspiration  imparted 
to  them  by  real  dancing,  and  by  such  fiddling  as  they 
had  never  dreamed  of,  carried  them  completely  away 
with  enthusiasm,  so  much  so  that  they  went  back  to  their 
Northern  homes  only  to  order  Virginia  fiddlers  whenever 
they  could  get  them,  and  to  introduce  Virginia  dancing 
in  all  of  the  great  cities.  How  popular  that  dancing  and 
the  fiddling  which  inspires  it,  and  without  which  it  could 
not  exist,  has  become  throughout  the  Empire,  no  one 
need  now  be  told.  True,  the  lovers  of  pure  hugging  still 
insist  upon  having  their  persons  grappled  and  tousled  by 
any  two-legged  animal  in  trousers  they  can  find,  but  the 
better  classes,  who  can  be  merry  and  at  the  same  time 
decent,  much  prefer  the  style  disseminated  by  the  Curds- 
ville  College.  And  this  I  consider  a  great  and  permanent 
blessing  to  mankind. 

Subsidiary  to  the  regular  Curdsville  curriculum  was  a 
course  on  the  fife,  the  proper  playing  of  which  I  vainly 
sought  to  revive.  Never  was  there  a  more  complete 
failure.  After  a  few  years  of  earnest  toil,  fife-playing 
was  dropped  and  never  resumed.  The  truth  is,  the  art 
of  performing  on  the  fife  died  with  Blind  Billy.  I  never 
knew  a  man  but  Billy  who  could  do  justice  to  the  fife — a 
glorious  instrument  (not  for  military,  but  for  terpsi- 
chorean  purposes)  in  the  hands  of  a  man  of  genius.  Such 
a  man  was  Billy.  I  wish  I  knew  his  history. 

If  I  failed  signally  in  the  matter  of  the  fife,  my  success 
in  the  course  which  I  substituted  in  place  of  it  was  equally 
signal.  So  early  as  1870,  the  old  original  tune  played  on 
the  long  tin-horn  previous  to  the  tobacco  breaks  in 
Lynchburg  had  become  garbled.  It  could  readily  be 
recognized  as  a  sickly  and  adumbrated  simulacrum  of  its 
grand  original  (tobacco  men  never  failing  to  respond  to 
its  summons),  but  it  had  lost  much  of  that  wild,  weird, 
and  deadly  unearthliness  which  characterized  it  from 


42  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

1820  to   1830,  and  even  later  than  that.     It  is,  in  my 
deliberate    judgment,    the   most   ghastly   and   appalling 
chant  that  ever  emanated  from  the  musical  imagination. 
The  name  of  its  composer  is  lost  in  the  night  of  oblivion. 
My  opinion  is  that  it  is  not  the  work  of  any  one  man, 
not  a  single  composition  struck  off  in  the  heat  of  inspi- 
ration, but  is  more  likely  a  growth  and  the  product  of 
many  minds.     Be  that  as  it  may,  in  1870,  the  decadence 
of  Ethiopian  life  and  art,  which  followed  the  liberation 
of  our  Virginia  slaves,  was  most  painfully  marked  in  the 
change  that  had  taken  place  in  this  astonishing  old  tune. 
Previous  to  his  departure  for  Georgia,  Jones  had  often 
lamented  with  me  over  this  sad  change,  and  he  had  often 
promised  to  write  out  for  me,  in  full,  the  notes  of  the 
tune  as  it  was  blown  in  its  prime.*     The  establishment  of 
the  Curdsville  Fiddlers'  College  enabled  Jones  and  my- 
self to  rescue  this  tune  (far  more  peculiar  and  saddening 
in  its  effects  than   the  famous  Miserere  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel),  and  to  restore  it  to  its  pristine  completeness. 
Jones  not  only  wrote  out  the  music,  but,  leaving  his  work 
on  the  park  and  reservoir,  came  down  in  person  to  Curds- 
ville,  bringing  with   him   a   tobacco-horn  blower  from 
Planter's  or  Martin's  warehouse,  and  stayed  with  him 
until  he  was  thoroughly  enough  versed  in  the  tune  to 
teach  it.     His  class  was  small.      Few  cared  to  devote 
themselves  assiduously  to  the  study  of  the  horn.     Hearing 
of  this,  I  immediately  instituted  a  Horn  Prize  of  one 
hundred  dollars  in  gold,  which  soon  brought  an  ample 
supply  of  aspirants,  and  I  have  now  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  so  long  as  the  world  stands  and  tobacco  is 
sold  in  Lynchburg,  it  will  be  sold  to  the  sound  of  the 
most  mournful  and  remarkable  combination  of  notes  ever 
framed  by  the  human  mind. 

My  object  in  buying  the  Buckingham  Female  Institute 
was  not  merely  to  save  it  from  the  utter  destruction  which 
seemed  to  await  it,  but  to  establish  there  another  Fiddlers' 
College  for  white  men  exclusively.  But  remembering  that 


*  Kroitner  also  promised  to  do  the  same  thing,  but  never  fulfilled  his 
promise.  Germans  settling  in  Virginia  soon  get  to  be  Virginians,  even  in 
the  matter  of  promises  and  procrastination. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


43 


the  practice  of  Virginia  fiddling,  beneficial  and,  indeed, 
ennobling  to  the  black  man,  has  a  tendency  to  encourage 
dissipation  in  the  white  man,  I  abandoned  the  original 
plan  and  consecrated  the  Institute  wholly  to  the  instruc- 
tion of  able-bodied  young  men  in  the  ancient  and  manly 
games  of  "  Chermany"  and  "Ant'ny  Over."  The  ety- 
mology of  the  former  game  is  obscure.  It  may  have  been 
"Germany,"  though  I  have  never  known  a  Dutchman  to 
play  it  or  even  to  be  aware  of  its  rules  and  regulations. 
My  aim  was  to  supplant  the  vile  pastimes  of  base-ball  and 
billiards  which  befell  the  Commonwealth  as  a  part  of  the 
loathsome  legacy  bequeathed  us  by  the  war.  I  could  not, 
indeed,  believe  that  these  debilitating  and  abnormal  sports 
would  perpetually  exclude  the  time-honored  and  patriotic 
games  to  which  Virginians  had  been  accustomed,  but  my 
fear  was  that  after  the  base-ball  business  the  awful  thing 
called  cricket  might  follow,  and  that  I  could  not  have 
borne.  Those  silly  wickets  and  those  absurd  bats  are  to 
my  mind  execrable,  inexcusable,  and  unfounded  upon 
reason  and  common  sense. 

I  am  happy  to  say  that  the  wholesome  streams  poured 
forth  from  the  pellucid  fountain  of  Virginian  sports  at  the 
Buckingham  Institute  permeated  and  percolated  the  Com- 
monwealth until  base-ball  disappeared  entirely,  and  bil- 
liards were  relegated  to  the  largest  cities,  where  they  will 
forever  divide  the  honors  with  bagatelle,  which  I  take  to 
be  the  last  resource  of  manikins. 

My  feelings  toward  Farmville  and  the  whole  region 
thence  along  the  old  stage  road,  and  the  railroad  too,  up 
to  Lynchburg,  were  of  the  warmest  character.  A  portion 
of  Cumberland  also  was  dear  to  me.  There  was  nothing 
I  would  not  have  done  for  Cartersville,  for  Oak  Grove 
(formerly  called  Walton's  Store  when  I  went  to  school 
there,  some  seventy-odd  years  ago,  to  Mr.  Burns),  for 
Tarwallet  Church,  Cumberland  Court-House,  for  Lang- 
horne's  Tavern,  Qa  Ira,  Hard  Bargain  (Mr.  Page  taught 
me,  and  I  had  the  itch  there),  for  Raine's  Tavern,  the 
New  Store,  the  wild  region  once  called  Algiers,  for 
Walker's  Store  (my  father  and  I  once  stayed  all  night 
there  with  old  Mr.  McDearmon),  for  Prince  Edward 
Court-House  (to  turn  back  a  little,  where  Mr.  Ballantyne 


44 


WHAT  I  DID  WITH 


taught  me,  and  I  learned  to  shoot  the  horse-pistol),  for 
Appomattox  Church,  near  which  I  spent  in  boyhood  many 
happy  days  at  Dr.  Merritt  Allen's,  for  Pamplin's  Depot, 
for  the  other  Raine's  Tavern,  which  subsequently  became 
Appomattox  Court-House,  for  the  Spout  Spring,  for  Con- 
cord, and  every  foot  of  the  way  thence  to  Lynchburg, 
There  was  nothing,  I  say,  that  I  would  not  have  done  for 
these  places  and  others  I  could  name, — for  example,  the 
Red  House  Tavern,  in  Charlotte.  Indeed,  I  wanted  to 
do  something  for  the  first  lock  below  Lynchburg,  for  Bent 
Creek  and  Warminster,  so  affectionate  was  my  remem- 
brance of  them  all,  but  many  were  past  doing  for,  and 
others  needed  little  of  my  assistance  ;  as,  for  instance, 
Farmville,  which  prospered  greatly  after  the  lunatic  asylum 
and  the  Mercury  were  started  there.  All  I  could  do  for 
Farmville  was  to  buy  the  place  called  Mountain  View, 
which  my  uncle,  Mr.  James  Evans,  rented  for  a  number 
of  years,  and  erect  upon  it  a  foundation  for  the  everlast- 
ing education  of  real  old  Virginia  cooks,  so  that  as  long 
as  the  human  jaw  continued  to  work  in  the  Virginia 
countenance,  ash-cake,  good  loaf-bread,  fried  chicken, 
and  a  thousand  other  delicacies  known  only  to  Virginians 
should  exist  for  said  jaw  to  play  upon.  It  furnishes  me 
infinite  happiness  to  be  able  to  state  what  is  well  known 
to  all  the  enlightened  natives,  that  the  Evans  foundation 
secured  forever  to  Virginians  the  cooking  and  the  food 
without  which  they  would  long  since  have  ceased  to  exist; 
and  not  only  that,  but  that  from  this  invaluable  institution 
(which  I  designed  as  a  nursery  for  Virginia  cooks,  partly 
of  both  sexes,  but  mostly  fat  females)  there  went  forth  so 
large  a  supply  of  cooks  that  I  was  enabled  within  twenty 
years  to  establish  in  all  the  principal  cities  of  the  world 
Virginia  taverns,  where  a  man  could  eat  an  old-fashioned 
dinner  of  every  variety  of  Virginia  meat,  vegetables,  and 
dessert,  including  pan-cakes  and  fritters,  and  afterwards 
retire  to  a  real  old  Virginia  room  with  an  open  fire  of 
hickory  or  pine,  as  he  might  prefer  (or  with  fennel  in  the 
fire-place  in  summer-time),  and  smoke  Virginia  .tobacco 
in  a  Virginia  pipe  as  he  leaned  back  in  a  split-bottom 
chair  and  cocked  his  feet  on  an  Old  Virgina  mantel-piece, 
duly  ornamented  with  an  oblong  gilt  mirror,  divided  into 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


45 


three  compartments,  flanked  by  tall  silver  candlesticks  (a 
candle-stand  being  in  readiness  for  them  when  desired), 
and  surmounted  with  a  picture  of  General  Washington 
crossing  the  Delaware,  or  commanding  at  Monmouth. 

I  do  believe  that  these  Virginia  taverns  have  done  the 
world  a  great  deal  of  good.  An  archaeological  interest 
attaches  to  them.  They  carry  forward  into  the  new  times 
the  very  life  and  custom  of  a  remote  and  glorious  past, 
for  they  present  in  addition  to  the  furniture  of  a  former  era 
(for  which  those  who  are  the  least  curious  about  the  cus- 
toms of  their  ancestors  have  always  the  liveliest  fondness) 
the  actual  food  and  the  manner  of  cooking  it  which  ob- 
tained in  the  days  long  gone  by,  and  in  that  way  they 
afford  the  historian  precisely  that  information  which  in 
regard  to  ages  still  more  remote,  fancifully  called  pre- 
historic or  stone  ages,  is  left  almost  entirely  to  conjecture. 
Nor  must  I  omit  to  notice  the  remarkable  circumstance 
that,  notwithstanding  the  changes  which  are  continually 
taking  place  in  the  human  constitution,  unfitting  it  in 
general  for  the  diet  of  previous  times,  the  Virginia  eating 
has  proved,  after  long  trial,  to  be  suited  to  all  times  and 
to  all  modifications  of  the  system.  It  is  now  admitted 
by  the  best  physiologists  that  Virginia  ash-cake,  streaked 
middling,  etc.,  will  probably  be  as  welcome  and  as  whole- 
some to  the  last  men  who  inhabit  this  planet  as  it  was  to 
Buck  Farrar,  of  Farmville,  in  1811. 

[It  was  an  immense  relief  to  me  when  I  learned  that 
Hampden  Sydney  College  had  raised  three  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars,  and  that  a  sum  still  larger  had  been  obtained 
for  the  Union  Theological  Seminary.  Long  experience 
had  taught  me  that  only  very  rich  Yankee  men  can  do  much 
for  colleges  (Southern  men  being  fine  promisers  but  poor 
payers),  and  I  had  so  much  to  do  and  so  little  to  do  it  with. 
I  thought  it  hard,  too,  that  I  had  to  build  the  perfect  Mac- 
Adam  road  (the  only  one  in  the  State)  from  Farmville  to 
the  college,  with  shade-trees  and  sidewalks  all  the  way — 
hard,  because  I  believed  that  the  professors  on  College  Hill 
maintained  a  bad  dirt-road  because  they  did  not  want  out- 
siders to  obtrude  into  that  delightful  little  Republic  of 
Letters.  But  I  built  the  road  for  my  own  sake,  and  cannot 
say  I  am  sorry  I  did  build  it,  though  I  now  think  it  ought 


46  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

to  have  been  a  plank-road,  for  the  benefit  of  Evans's  saw- 
mill and  other  saw-mills  that  needed  employment. 

Everybody  said  I  ought  to  have  built  a  narrow-gauge 
railroad  instead  of  a  MacAdam  road.  I  could  not  so  think. 
At  that  day  there  was  a  mania  on  the  subject  of  narrow-, 
as  at  an  earlier  day  there  had  been  a  mania  about  broad- 
gauge  roads,  but  nowuno  one  doubts  that  many  even  of 
the  latter  ought  not  to  have  been  built  until  the  country 
became  more  thickly  settled.  The  same  amount  of  money 
spent  in  first-class  turnpikes  would  have  been  productive 
of  much  more  good,  and  given  much  more  comfort  to 
country  people.  As  soon  as  Virginia  became  an  integral 
part  of  the  Empire,  a  moiety  only  of  the  former  taxation 
being  applied  to  the  improvement  of  country  roads  made 
the  land  habitable,  and  then,  for  the  first  time,  immigrants 
ceased  to  alight  for  a  moment  and  depart  the  next,  like  so 
many  wild  pigeons.] 

I  might,  if  space  permitted,  dwell  at  some  length  on 
this  important  subject,  but  must  hurry  on  to  Richmond, 
saying  only  in  passing  that  little  favors,  such  as  drinking- 
fountains,  equestrian  statues,  etc.,  were  distributed  freely 
to  Warminster,  and  other  places  heretofore  named,  the 
particulars  of  which  I  do  not  recall,  my  memory  being  at 
fault,  not  so  much  because  of  age  as  on  account  of  the 
multitude  of  things  done  in  various  hamlets  and  cross- 
roads which  were  dear  to  me. 

[Here  it  will  be  in  place  to  say  that  the  drinking-foun- 
tains  were  not  whisky-fountains.  This  is  a  specimen 
slander  of  the  thousands  gotten  up  against  me  by  the 
newspapers.  The  thing  is  absurd  on  its  very  face;  for  I 
suppose  there  is  not  a  man  in  the  world,  a  man  rich 
enough,  to  furnish  free  whisky  to  the  places  named  above 
even  if  they  had  desired  it,  which  they  did  not,  the  love 
of  it  having  departed  from  them. 

As  to  the  accusation  that  my  taste  presided  over  that 
parody  of  the  Bunker  Hill  monument,  at  Burkeville,  that, 
too,  is  a  vile  slander.  I  did  furnish  the  money  to  build 
there  a  shot-tower  two  hundred  feet  high,  and  requested 
its  shape  should  be  that  of  the  Eddystone  light-house. 
But  the  contractor,  a  violent  Southern  man,  would  make 
it  like  the  monument  in  question,  painted  it  black  and 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  47 

varnished  it.  As  a  shot-tower  it  was  not  a  success,  though 
Mr.  Hennipinkle,  a  worthy  German,  managed  it  econom- 
ically. I  had  a  suit  about  it  with  the  contractor,  but  was, 
of  course,  cast  on  account  of  my  supposed  wealth. 

It  was  cut  up  into  stories  of  ten  feet  each,  the  first  of 
which  was  a  bar-room,  the  second  a  tank,  the  third  a  job 
office,  the  fourth  an  editor's  room,  the  fifth  a  sumac  mill, 
and  the  rest  were  rented  out  as  lodging-rooms  for  artists 
and  poets  who  came  to  spend  the  summer  and  study  the 
scenery.  In  that  way  it  paid  very  well.  On  the  top  was 
a  huge  lantern,  illuminated  by  calcium  lights,  which 
proved  useful  to  the  railroads  at  night,  especially  after  the 
tracks  were  doubled.  The  great  black  tower  looming  up 
two  hundred  feet  in  air,  and  flaming  like  a  small  sun, 
made  the  night. approach  to  Burkeville  singularly  fine  and 
novel. 

The  superb  mosque  built  by  me  not  far  from  the  town 
as  a  dancing-hall  for  the  good  people  of  the  vicinage,  was 
much  admired,  but  was  burnt  by  a  fanatical  dervish,  who 
came  through  the  James  River  and  Kanawha  Canal  on  the 
first  packet-boat  that  traversed  its  waters  after  its  comple- 
tion to  the  Ohio — a  sad  end  to  so  pretty  and  enjoyable 
an  edifice.  I  could  not  rebuild  it,  being  in  reduced  cir- 
cumstances.] 


SIXTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Good  Sidewalks  in  Richmond— Council  of  Cobblers  and  Ostlers— New 
Capitol  proposed — Intense  Rage  of  the  Legislature — Speeches  of  In- 
dignant Members — Appearance  of  Capitol  in  1910 — Strangers  from 
Japan  and  North  Carolina— Deplorable  Consequence  of  a  Bank,  etc. 

I  CANNOT  say  that  I  loved  Richmond  as  much  as  I  did 
Lynchburg  and  Curdsville,  but  it  was  the  capital  of  my 
State,  needed,  I  may  say  nearly  everything,  contained 
males  and  females  whom  I  liked  far  more  than  they  liked 
me,  and  was  a  good  field  for  expenditures  and  experi- 
ments. Therefore,  I  spent  money  right  freely  for  it. 

In  the  firsfplace,  it  was  in    1878,  when  I  commenced 


48  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

active  operations,  the  worst-paved  city,  as  to  sidewalks, 
in  the  civilized  world,  and,  large  as  it  was,  it  did  not 
contain  one  of  several  kinds  of  edifices  much  needed. 
The  Great  Moral  Donator  told  me  that  a  man  who  could 
donate  himself  a  hack-ride  every  hour  in  the  day  need 
not  be  concerned  about  sidewalks  or  railroad  stations; 
one  good  theatre  would,  in  his  opinion,  be  of  more  use 
and  comfort  than  anything  else.  But  I  had  corns,  many 
and  grievous  corns,  and  loved  "to  walk  sometimes,  much 
as  it  pleased  me  at  other  times  to  look  down  from  my 

own  carriage  at  Jack ,  but  I  will  'not  call  his  name. 

So  I  paved  the  better  part  of  the  city,  and  thus  made  it  a 
pleasure,  not  a  pain,  to  walk  the  streets. 

[I  have  just  been  informed  that,  for  many  years,  the 
common  council  consisted  wholly  of  ostlers,  who  were  in 
league  with  the  cordwainers,  cobblers,  and  boot  and 
shoe  men  of  every  description.  The  town  of  Lynn,  I  am 
assured,  contributed  annually  ten  thousand  dollars  towards 
the  maintenance  of  a  perfect  system  of  detestable  side- 
walks. To  the  best  of  my  recollection  those  sidewalks 
were  not  touched  from  1860  to  1878,  say  eighteen  years; 
meanwhile,  the  streets  were  kept  in  good  condition,  many 
of  them  being  repaved,  and  many  new  and  long  streets 
built.  Thus  the  ostlers  had  the  happiness  of  seeing  their 
horses  properly  considered,  while  the  shoe  men  enjoyed 
an  immense  business  obtained  at  a  most  trying  expense  to 
the  pockets  and  toes  of  the  most  patient  and  uncomplain- 
ing public  in  the  world.  1892.] 

What  I  wanted  to  do,  above  all  things,  was  to  clear 
away  every  building,  except  St.  Paul's  Church,  from  the 
Exchange  Hotel  to  Eighth  Street,  and  from  Main  to  Broad, 
so  as  to  give  me  room  enough  for  my  new  State  Capitol. 
But  this,  like  many  other  projects  dear  to  my  heart,  had 
to  be  given  up.  In  my  earlier  dreamings  I  had  always 
intended  to  complete,  on  an  improved  design,  the  Wash- 
ington Monument,  in  Washington,  and  to  erect  on  the 
vacant  lot,  between  that  monument  and  the  Smithsonian 
Institute,  an  Academy  of  Art  (painting  and  sculpture) 
which  should  be  without  an  equal  in  the  world.  That 
idea  had,  of  course,  been  long  abandoned.  The  little 
money  I  owned  wasn't  a  hundredth  panbf  what  was 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


49 


needed  in  Virginia.  But  it  was  hard  to  give  up  the 
design  of  that  enlarged  and  splendid  square  in  Rich- 
mond, with  its  stately  capitol,  modeled  upon  the  original, 
but  far  loftier,  more  capacious,  and  imposing.  How  often 
I  had  seen  and  gloated  over  them  in  fancy  !  My  princi- 
pal was  untouched,  but  much  was  to  be  done,  and  the 
best  I  could  do  (in  fact,  it  was  all  I  could  do  to  that 
particular  end)  was  to  offer  the  State  a  gift  of  one  million 
of  dollars  on  condition  it  would  issue  its  bonds  for  a  like 
amount,  the  total  of  two  millions  to  be  devoted  to  the 
building  of  a  capitol  worthy  of  Virginia  and  its  history. 

Although'  I  offered  to  take  all  the  bonds  myself,  the 
proposition  produced  an  uproar  in  the  legislature,  and 
brought  down  upon  me  a  shower  of  abuse. 

"This  bloated  capitalist,  Adams,"  said  the  member 
from  Zedville  Court-House,  "  offers  a  gross  indignity  to 
the  Commonwealth.  Sir,  the  State  of  Virginia  is  not  a 
pauper.  She  wants  no  capitol,  and  when  she  does,  she'll 
build  it  herself  out  of  the  surplus  arising  from  the  sale  of 
the  West  Virginia  certificates.  In  my  humble  judgment 
this  insidious  capitalist  has  designs  upon  the  virtue,  integ- 
rity, and  manhood  of  this  Commonwealth." 

"  My  learned  and  honorable  friend,"  said  the  delegate 
from  Xton  Xroads,  "does  not  put  the  case  too  strongly. 
I,  sir,  consider  that  the  great  and  mighty  State  of  Vir- 
ginia is  bound  to  uphold  this  building,  and  to  cherish  it 
forever  as  an  immortal,  priceless  legacy  bequeathed  from 
the  fathers.  This,  sir,  is  a  high  hill.  From  here  down 
to  the  river  is  a  matter  of  sixty  or  eighty  feet,  and  if  we 
want  more  room,  why,  sir,  we  can  dig  down  to  any 
extent,  and  have  as  many  basements  as  we  please.  If 
we  strike  water  we  can  pump  it  out,  and  if  cement  is 
needed,  as  good  cement,  sir,  can  be  had  at  Belcony  Falls 
as  thar  is  in  this  world — pure  Old  Virginyar  cement, 
sir.  What  does  the  bloated  Adams  say  to  that,  sir  ?' ' 

"They  tell  me,  sir,"  exclaimed  the  senator  from 
Bullaningunsopolis,  "that  the  building  is  rotten.  True, 
sir,  for  I  myself  have  punched  a  hole  in  its  heaviest  tim- 
bers with  my  little  finger.  But,  sir,  we  can  bind  the 
dear  edifice  together  with  competent  hoop-iron,  or  better 
still,  with  resolute  and  unyielding  grape-vines  from  our 


So  WHAT  I  DID    WITH 

native  hills,  and  so,  sir,  fondle,  sir,  and  encourage  it, 
sir,  that,  sir,  it  will  not  fall  till  it  crumbles  into  small, 
sacred  dust.  True,  sir,  that  many  have  been  killed  in 
this  loved  mansion  .of  the  mighty,  departed  dead.  But, 
sir,  what  is  human  life  compared  to  this  blessed  and  ven- 
erated old  building?  It  is  as  the  infinitesimal  droplet 
of  the  ordinary  aqueous  fluid  in  the  bounding  and  bound- 
less ocean  of  unfathomability.  Besides,  sir,  we  need  not 
assemble  in  these  ancient  old  halls.  Temporary  and  cheap 
sheds  should  be  erected  for  our  accommodation  against 
the  railings  of  the  Squarr,  to  be  used  during  the  brief 
but  economical  session,  and  then  took  apart,  sir,  for 
future  reference.  Once  a  day  we  could,  in  joint  body, 
emerge  from  our  sheds,  and,  with  locked  hands,  gaze  in 
speechless  joy,  awe,  and  adoration  upon  this  ancient,  old, 
and  uninhabited  (except  by  a  few  officials)  contraption." 

I  left  my  offer  standing  for  a  year  or  two,  and  then,  by 
the  advice  of  my  friends,  withdrew  it. 

[The  capitol  as  it  now  appears  with  its  grape-vines  and 
bands  of  hoop-iron  is  considered  a  curiosity.  Many 
strangers  from  Japan  and  North  Carolina  come  every  day 
to  look  at  it.  The  four  hundred  large  pine-trees,  care- 
fully whitewashed,  with  which  it  is  propped  on  every 
side,  are  specially  admired.  A  collection  of  long  iron 
rods  running  through  and  through  the  building,  and 
secured  to  the  tail  of  the  horse  of  the  equestrian  statue 
of  General  George  Washington,  also  attracts  attention. 
1910.*] 

[No  antiquarian  can  fail  to  applaud  the  large  public 
spirit  which  incased  the  Bell-house  in  massivff  walls  of 
French  plate-glass,  so  that  it  can  readily  be  seen  with  the 
naked  eye,  and,  at  the  same  time,  be  secure  from  the 
profane  punching  of  people  whose  business  in  life  is  to 
job  things  with  walking-sticks.  And  while  I  cordially 
indorsed  the  importation  from  Lynchburg  of  the  old 
market-house  and  its  re-erection  in  the  square  as  a  unique 
monument  of  the  past,  I  must  be  allowed  to  say,  with 


*  Virginia  did  not  build  a  New  Capitol  at  that  time,  nor  in  any  after- 
time,  simply  because  a  capitol  was  not  needed  in  a  petty  Province  that 
had  ceased  to  be  a  State. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  ^ 

due  humility,  that  it  is  not,  perhaps,  the  fittest  place  for 
the  storing  of  public  documents.  1912.] 

Considering  the  two  millions  refused  by  the  State  as  so 
much  clear  gain,  I  could  no  longer  refuse  my  assent  to  a 
proposition  of  a  practical  turn  which  had  been  urged 
upon  me  with  great  force  by  some  of  my  business  ac- 
quaintances. My  opinion  had  always  been,  and  still  is, 
that  Richmond,  before  the  war,  was  plenty  large  enough 
and  very  nearly  rich  enough.  It  seemed  to  me  then,  as 
it  does  now,  that  there  is  no  more  need  for  monstrous 
cities  than  for  monstrous  individuals.  But  in  this  no 
Richmond  person  agreed  with  me,  the  universal  opinion 
being  that  the  bigger  the  city  became,  the  better  off 
everybody  would  be.  So  I  gave  my  consent  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  bank,  which  should  not  be  a  side-show  to 
some  big  shaving-shop  in  New  York,  but  should  be  con- 
ducted solely  in  the  interest  of  Richmond  merchants, 
millers,  manufacturers,  and  mechanics.  The  result  was 
astonishing  even  to  me,  with  my  astute  and  capacious 
business  mind.  New  industries  in  iron,  cotton,  pork, 
canned  fruits  and  oysters,  and  a  hundred  other  products 
sprang  up  like  magic,  and  each  reacting  upon  the  other 
caused  so  sudden  and  so  vast  an  increase  of  prosperity  as 
to  alarm  calm  men  and  to  sadden  me  to  the  uttermost, 
for  to  me  the  growing  city  meant  growing  wealth  to  the 
comparatively  few  (no  matter  what  their  number  might 
be),  and  growing  poverty  to  the  many,  with  accompany- 
ing vice  and  crime.  But  the  force  had  been  put  in 
motion,  and  the  work  went  on  with  ever-accelerated 
speed.  Within  five  years  we  had  wrested  our  coffee 
trade  from  Baltimore  and  New  Orleans,  established  a 
Birmingham  reputation  for  our  wares  in  steel,  started  a 
fair  rivalry  with  Lowell  in  cotton  goods,  and  what  is  of 
more  importance  than  all  of  these  put  together,  we  had 
gained  enough  of  common  sense  to  know  that  our  flour 
ships  could  bring  from  Brazil  not  only  coffee  but  hides  as 
well.  Boston  became  scared,  as  indeed  she  could  not 
help  being,  at  our  shoe  and  leather  business,  which  out- 
stripped all  our  other  businesses.  Money  fairly  rolled  into 
Richmond. 

But  I  cannot  dwell  upon  these  practical  matters.     To 


52  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

recall  them,  brings  nothing  but  pain.  What  earthly  right 
had  a  humorist  to  meddle  with  such  things  ?  Here  is 
this  great  city  [numbering  now  fully  half  a  million  of 
souls,  1911],  and  here  are  all  the  evils  that  belong  to  all 
such  cities.  One  cannot  go  to  see  his  friends  without 
traveling  from  two  to  ten  miles  on  the  street  railways. 
[Rich  as  people  say  I  am,  it  is  out  of  the  question  to 
consume  an  hour  in  my  private  carriage  when  the  cars, 
drawn  by  dummyTengines,  will  carry  me  the  same  distance 
in  a  few  minutes,  and  at  a  cost  of  only  a  penny.] 

[Just  here  it  is  due  to  myself  to  say  that  the  suggestion 
about  hides,  with  its  dreadful  results  in  the  increase  of 
business,  wealth,  and  population,  was  not  my  own.  I 
disclaim  it  utterly,  and  am  in  no  way  whatsoever  respon- 
sible for  its  origin.  The  suggestion  was  made  to  me  as  far 
back  as  1873,  ^7  Hon.  James  McDonald,  and  he  alone 
is  to  blame  for  all  the  deplorable  consequences.  For  if 
my  money  enabled  Richmond  men  to  carry  it  out,  they 
could  not  have  carried  it  out  had  no  such  suggestion  ever 
been  made.  I  wash  my  hands  of  the  whole  business, 
which  I  regard  as  deplorable  in  the  highest  degree. 


SEVENTH   INSTALLMENT. 

Railroad  Depots  in  Richmond — Improvements  on  Broad  Street — Shields 
House — Virginia  Historical  Society  Building — Colonel  T.  H.  Wynne 
and  Dr.  W.  P.  Palmer — Automaton  of  Com.  Porter — Brice  Church — 
Free- Pew  Question  settled — Paganism  of  Adams — Pulpit  Propriety  and 
Duck  Guns — Rev.  Dr.  Broadus — Varlets,  Cudgels,  and  Assassins — 
Congregational  Singing — Church  of  Spectroscope. 

IT  is  as  natural  for  a  rich  man  to  build  as  for  a  beaver 
or  a  bird.  I  was  pressed  almost  beyond  endurance  to  do 
something  for  Richmond  in  the  way  of  public  edifices 
which  should  in  some  faint  measure  approximate  the  only 
really  grand,  substantial,  and  tasteful  structures  of  which 
the  city  could  boast  during  the  last  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  I  mean  the  railroad  depots.  But  this 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


53 


was  clearly  impossible.  Profuse  as  these  depots  were  in 
number,  each  was  much  more  unique,  stately,  and  wonder- 
ful than  all  the  rest,  including  itself.  The  reproduction 
on  Broad  Street,  between  Eighth  and  Ninth,  of  the  Poe- 
cile  Stoa,  simple,  pure,  chaste,  and  lovely,  was  not  more 
thoroughly  Greek  and  agreeable  to  the  highly  cultivated 
eye  than  the  colossal  Aztec,  Assyrian,  Etruscan,  and 
Congo  constructions  on  Byrd,  Pearl,  and  the  bottom  of 
Broad  Street,  near  the  old  market.  Nor  must  the  pre- 
historic kjokkenmodding  of  the  York  River  road  be  non- 
enumerated. 

[On  a  little  scrap  of  paper  attached  to  the  outside  of 
the  bundle  of  the  Adams  MS.  were  found  the  remarks 
below,  from  which  it  would  appear  that  the  old  man 
meditated  great  things  for  Broad  Street,  but  whether 
before  or  after  he  became  satirical  it  is  impossible  to 
decide,  there  being  no  date  to  the  scrap. — Ed.  Whig.'} 

[One  of  my  first  investments  in  Richmond  was  the 
purchase  of  the  Fredericksburg  depot  property  on  Broad 
Street.  Finding  that  the  removal  of  the  railroad  track 
had  given  a  wonderful  impetus  to  business,  and  that 
various  palatial  stores  had  displaced  the  shanties  and 
shackly  houses  which  formerly  flanked  that  street,  I  de- 
termined to  build  a  splendid  hotel  on  my  property,  for- 
merly the  site  of  the  depot.  The  hotel  was  finished  in 
1 88 1,  and  was  named  the  "Shields  House."*  It  was  the 


*  Colonel  John  C.  Shields,  a  warm-hearted,  worthy  man,  after  whom 
the  hotel  was  called.  His  real  name,  Lieutenant-Governor  Oilman  assures 
me,  was  Porter,  and  he  was  the  only  son  of  Commodore  Porter  by  his 
twelfth  wife.  When  his  father  got  married  a  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
time,  young  Porter  became  indignant  and  assumed  the  name  of  his 
mother's  family. 

Commodore  Porter's  death,  at  a  great  age,  left  such  avoid  in  the  com- 
munity that  I  engaged  an  ingenious  mechanic  to  make  for  me  an  exact 
facsimile  of  him  in  wood.  A  more  perfect  automaton  was  never  con- 
structed ;  it  walked  all  about  the  city,  collected  accounts,  talked,  and 
smoked,  and  could  not  be  told  from  the  original  commodore  except  by 
the  closest  inspection.  It  was  touching  to  see  it  going  along,  with  its 
venerable  beard  and  pipe.  The  bad  boys  would  sometimes  tie  him  to  a 
post,  and  the  machinery  being  still  at  work,  his  legs  kept  moving  in  the 
oddest  manner,  and  he  exhibited  all  the  signs  of  violent  rage.  At  last 
they  got  to  lighting  their  cigars  by  scratching  matches  on  his  nose,  and 

5* 


54 


WHAT  I  DID   WITH 


most  magnificent  hotel  outside  of  Chicago.  Ballard  was 
the  first  lessee,  and  he  seldom  had  a  vacant  room,  so  great 
was  the  rush  of  visitors.  As  a  grateful  tribute  to  the 
"Broad  Street  Association,"  I  appropriated  one-half  of  the 
first  year's  rent  of  the  hotel  to  the  purchase  and  erection 
of  a  bronze  statue  of  James  Lyons,  the  president  of  the 
association.  I  always  regretted  that  I  did  not  buy  several 
hundred  acres  of  land  beyond  the  western  confines  of 
Richmond,  for  as  soon  as  the  Court  of  Appeals  decided 
that  the  ordinance  prohibiting  the  use  of  locomotives  on 
Broad  Street  was  valid,  the  owners  of  the  street  railway 
extended  their  tracks  to  the  fair-grounds,  property  in  the 
vicinity  of  Richmond  College  jumped  up  one  hundred 
per  cent.,  and  such  was  the  activity  in  building  opera- 
tions that  the  contractors  of  Richmond  had  to  bring  at 
least  five  thousand  mechanics  here.] 

As  I  had  not  the  means  to  cope  with  these  prodigies 
of  architecture,  I  contented  myself  with  the  purchase  of 
the  three  squares  lying  between  Capitol  and  Broad  and 
extending  from  Ninth  to  what  was  called  in  old  times 
Governor  Street.  After  sweeping  away  all  the  buildings 
which  had  not  particularly  adorned  this  space,  I  erected 
on  the  square,  between  Ninth  and  Tenth,  a  proper  build- 
ing for  the  Virginia  Historical  Society.  I  say  "I  erected," 
meaning  by  that  only  the  money  part  of  the  matter.  The 
selection  of  the  design,  details,  etc.,  etc.,  was  left  to  the 
executive  committee,  who  intrusted  the  execution  to  Col- 
onel Thomas  H.  Wynne.* 

[So  great  was  the  revival  of  trade  and  the  increase  of 
wealth  in  New  Orleans  after  '75  that  the  Southern  His- 
torical Society  was  carried  back  by  acclamation  and  en- 


sending  him  around  with  profane  and  indelicate  verses  written  on  his 
forehead.  Out  of  all  patience  at  this,  I  gave  him  to  Henry  Eustace,  who 
made  a  large  fortune  by  exhibiting  him  through  the  country.  It  is  said 
that  when  General  Richardson  felt  him  and  found  that  he  really  was 
wooden,  and  not  the  genuine  commodore  in  propria  persons,  he  just 
laughed  himself  to  death. 

*  A  most  extraordinary  man.  The  only  thoroughly  practical  and  at 
the  same  time  excessively  antiquarian  man  I  ever  knew — good  dinner- 
giver. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


55 


dowed  with  a  million  of  dollars  at  the  very  first  meeting 
held  in  that  city.] 

Who  the  architect  was  that  Wynne  engaged  I  do  not 
now  recollect,  nor  do  I  know  how  much  of  the  interior 
arrangement  is  due  to  him  and  how  much  to  the  architect, 
but  the  building  as  a  whole  excites  general  approbation 
for  its  beauty,  simplicity,  and  durability.  The  interior 
could  not  be  improved.  I  should  myself  have  liked  a 
more  elevated  structure,  but  the  limits  of  the  lot  forbade 
anything  loftier.  It  is  a  pleasant  resort  for  the  student 
and  the  lover  of  Virginia  in  the  past.  It  is  not  a  museum 
for  noisy  boys  and  men,  for  giggling  girls,  or  for  open- 
mouthed  curiosity-mongers.  For  a  great  number  of  years 
it  has  been  in  charge  of  Dr.  William  P.  Palmer,  who 
devotes  his  whole  time  to  it,  and  each  succeeding  year 
becomes  more  and  more  absorbed  in  devotion  to  the  in- 
terests which  the  society  was  designed  to  subserve.  The 
fund,  ample  for  all  purposes,  provides  for  what  many 
consider  very  expensive  annual  meetings,  which  have 
become,  in  fact,  historical  festivals,  lasting  several  days. 
These  are  looked  forward  to  by  our  best  people  in  every 
part  of  the  State  not  with  interest  merely,  but  with 
eagerness. 

Openly,  and  by  indirection,  I  was  made  aware  of  the 
fact  that  Church  This  and  Church  That  would  receive  me 
as  a  member,  and  without  too  rigid  an  examination.  The 
hope  was  held  out  to  me  that  my  means  were  sufficient  to 
justify  me  in  the  indulgence  of  the  expectation  that  I  might 
one  day  anticipate  becoming  an  elder  or  vestryman,  and 
might  possibly  at  some  time  be  allowed  to  hand  around 
the  basket  if  I  dressed  becomingly  and  paid  enough  atten- 
tion to  my  hair.  But  whilst  in  one  sense  I  was  a  Christian 
(an  imperfect  one,  it  is  true),  I  was  also  a  pagan  and 
worshiper  of  Pan,  loving  the  woods  and  waters,  and 
preferring  to  go  to  them  (when  my  heart  was  stirred 
thereto  by  that  mysterious  power  which,  as  I  conceive, 
cares  little  for  worship  made  statedly  and  to  order  on 
certain  recurring  calendar  days)  rather  than  to  most  of 
the  brick  and  mortar  pens  that  are  supposed  to  hold  in 
some  way  that  which  the  visible  universe  no  more  contains 
than  the  works  of  his  hands  contain  the  sculptor  who 


5 6  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

makes  them  ;  for  I  take  it  that  the  glittering  show  revealed 
by  the  mightiest  telescope,  or  by  the  hope  mightier  even 
than  the  imagination  of  the  highest  mind,  is  but  as  a  par- 
cel of  motes  shining  in  a  single,  thin  beam  of  the  great 
sun  unseen  and  hidden  behind  shutters  never  to  be  wide 
opened.  Howbeit,  I  do  dearly  love  good  preaching  by 
an  umble,  not  hum-ble,  man,  who  has  thought  and  felt ; 
and  this  tempted  me  to  buy  the  Rev.  John  A.  Broadus 
for  my  own  use  and  behoof.  But  that  good  man  declined 
the  proposition,  and  an  enthusiastic  Baptist  threatened  to 
cane  me  for  daring  to  make  it.  (I  was  not  afraid  of  the 
man,  but  business  called  me  out  of  town  that  very  day  !) 
I  was  forced,  therefore,  to  build  my  own  church  and  hire 
my  own  preachers.  It  was  placed  on  the  lot  next  to 
Governor  Street,  was  circular  in  form,  seated  comfortably 
a  very  large  congregation,  and  the  pews  rising  one  above 
the  other  in  amphitheatre  form,  gave  great  satisfaction  to 
people  who  distressed  themselves  very  much  on  the  free- 
pew  question.  The  poor  people  chose  the  lower  seats 
nearest  the  preacher,  whilst  the  rich,  though  but  little  far- 
ther off  from  the  pulpit,  enjoyed  looking  down  upon  their 
neighbors.  In  this  way  all  were  gratified.  For  myself, 
having  plenty  of  money,  pews  gave  me  no  trouble,  and  as 
for  sects,  my  Panness  (not  theism)  enabled  me  to  discern 
much  that  was  admirable  in  all  sects  and  creeds  from  the 
Jew  down  (or  up,  as  you  will)  to  the  Catholic  and  Pres- 
byterian. Dogma  is  to  me  a  mere  gustatory  matter  of  the 
triflingest  moment,  but  freedom,  the  very  essence  and  at- 
mosphere of  intellect — (this  does  not  consist  with  the 
previously  expressed  views  of  Adams  about  the  will,  but 
that  is  the  old  man's  lookout  and  not  ours. — Ed.  Whig} 
— is  the  all-important  matter.  To  an  all-embracing  mind 
like  my  own,  dogma  of  any  kind  is  the  baldest  absurdity. 
For  every  thread,*  however  minute,  in  the  Web  of  Things 


*  Of  course  there  is  no  thread  and  no  web.  A  thread  which  at  every 
point  of  its  extension  should  meet  and  intertwine  with  threads  coming 
simultaneously  from  all  points  of  an  infinite  sphere,  would  be  a  better 
figure,  but  still  a  clumsy  one.  No  image  can  at  all  portray  the  complex- 
ity and  coherence  of  things  material  with  things  spiritual.  Yet  theolo- 
gians and  scientists  squabble  about  intrusion  into  their  several  domains, 
as  if  co-existencies  and  inter-existencies  (to  coin  a  word  intended  to  ex- 


MY  FIFTY  MILLION'S. 


57 


(the  capitals  "W"  and  "T"  are  important  here)  runs 
back  and  forth  to  infinity,  and  until  you  have  grasped  the 
two  endless  ends  you  cannot  possibly  tell,  or  so  much  as 
guess,  the  connections  and  meaning  of  any  one  fibre  of 
thought  or  fact*  And  revelation,  be  it  what  you  claim  for 
it,  like  all  things  else,  must  have  all  the  lights  of  the 
eternal  past  and  the  eternal  future  thrown  full  upon  it  be- 
fore it  is  interpretable  in  terms  of  the  whole  truth,  less 
than  which  can  never  satisfy  human  craving  or  explain 
human  action.  Nevertheless,  if  your  tooth  incline  you  to 
mustard  of  the  best  with  Methodism,  go  and  be  merry 
therewith,  only  do  not  grow  hot  against  me  because  my 
palate  leads  me  inevitably  to  Episcopacy  and  the  mild  oil 
of  the  olive. 

(My  pastor,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Asterisk,  has  not  induced  me 
materially  to  modify  my  views,  though  I  find  with  ad- 
vancing years  that  fixedness  of  opinion  is  less  objectionable 
to  me  than  it  was  aforetime.  1897.) 

By  no  means  did  I  engage  to  attend  regularly  my  own 
church.  There  was  too  much  disposition  to  make  room 
for  me,  and  to  give  me  a  seat,  although  my  ear-trumpet 
was  a  fine  instrument,  and  the  acoustics  of  the  building 
were  perfect.  The  sum  set  apart  for  the  minister — five 
hundred  dollars  a  Sunday  (and  we  had  a  new  preacher 
every  week) — generally  secured  an  excellent  sermon  and  a 
very  large  attendance.  Collections  were  never  taken  up, 
nor  were  boxes  placed  at  the  door  so  that  persons  might 
deposit  their  offerings  without  interrupting  the  services. 
Clergymen  were  engaged  of  all  denominations,  care  being 

press  life  within  life)  could  by  possibility  be  dissociated.  It  is  child's 
play.  "  These  toys  are  mine  and  you  sha'n't  touch  "em."  "These  are 
mine  and  you  sha'n't  touch  'em  either."  What  folly!  It  is  the  ever-re- 
curring and  ever-beneficent  struggle  between  conservation  and  develop- 
ment. "  Yet  you  say,  what  '  folly'  and  '  child's  play.'  "  I  do.  Folly  has 
its  uses,  and  child's  play  is  beneficial.  The  war  between  science  and  re- 
ligion must  go  on  forever.  Reconciliation  is  simply  impossible.  That 
proposed  by  Herbert  Spencer  is  in  effect  an  absolute  surrender  on  the 
part  of  theology.  Let  the  Titans  continue  their  unending  wrestle,  satis- 
fied that  whichever  falls  will  not  long  remain  down,  but,  Antaeus-like,  rise 
strengthened  by  his  fall.  For  this  universe  is  a  large  concern,  and  the 
finding  out  of  even  the  edge  of  it  will  occupy  some  considerable  time. 
Meanwhile  the  fight  of  "hold  fast"  and  "go  ahead"  must  continue  and 
ought  to  continue. 
c* 


5 8  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

taken  to  get  the  best  of  each,  and  but  a  single  restriction 
was  placed  upon  them.  Under  no  pretext  or  disguise 
whatsoever  was  pulpit  profanity  for  one  instant  allowed. 
Familiarity  and  intimate  personal  acquaintance  with  Deity, 
His  thoughts,  His  ways,  His  dealings,  and  even  His  in- 
tentions (more  shocking  to  me  than  any  bar-room  pro- 
fanity), were  sternly  kept  down  by  a  man  in  the  organ-loft 
armed  with  a  heavily-charged  duck-gun,  and  instructed  to 
shoot  down  the  offender  without  remorse  the  moment  he 
offended.  [Since  my  removal  from  Richmond,  the  killing 
of  one  or  two  pulpit  criminals  (I  am  tempted,  and  mean 
nothing  profane  by  it,  to  call  them  boon  companions  of 
the  Almighty,  for  that  is  what  they  would  have  the  people 
believe)  has  been  reported  to  me,  but  the  reporter  being 
an  editor  I  place  not  over-much  confidence  in  his  report.] 
Better,  far  better,  it  always  seemed  to  me,  was  the  awe  and 
trembling  of  the  Hebrew  who  dared  not  pronounce  the 
name  of  the  Holy  One,  or  who  did  it  prone  with  his 
mouth  in  the  dust.  Reverence  without  humility,  there 
can  be  none ;  ajnd,  if  the  preacher  be  not  reverent  and 
humble  from  the  very  inmost  of  his  soul,  never  can  he 
hope  to  make  his  congregation  so.  When  he  assumes  to 
know,  as  if  by  recent  personal  colloquial  interview  or  chat, 
the  views  and  purposes  of  the  Almighty,  he  forthwith  and 
of  necessity  adopts  a  dictatorial,  vicegerential  tone  that 
is  offensive  and  shocking  in  the  last  extreme.  The  duck- 
gun,  in  connection  with  the  congregational  singing,* 
which  was  encouraged  in  every  conceivable  way,  and  until 
the  people  learned  to  join  in  it  heart  and  soul,  did  good. 
I  do  not  regret  the  round  sum  laid  out  in  this  way,  though 
it  was  altogether  inconsonant  with  my  original  intention, 
which  was  to  give  my  money  to  deserving  individuals, 
and  not  to  edifices  or  institutions  of  any  kind.  But  he 

*  There  can  never  be  thorough,  hearty,  and  joyous  congregational 
singing  where  the  attendance  is  large,  as  was  the  case  in  my  church, 
which  did  not  bear  my  name,  however  (God  forbid!),  until  competent 
leaders,  male  and  female,  are  distributed  at  proper  and  sufficiently  nu- 
merous points  in  the  body  of  the  church.  This  was  done  in  Brice 
Church  (named  for  Miss  Nancy  Brice,  of  Lynchburg,  one  of  the  sweetest 
and  purest  old  ladies  that  ever  drew  the  breath  of  life),  and  the  effect  was 
everything  that  could  possibly  be  desired.  The  plan  has  since  been 
almost  universally  adopted. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


59 


who  undertakes  to  live  two  centuries  and  a  half  ahead  of 
his  time,  is  much  like  a  tadpole  who  tries  to  play  hum- 
ming-bird. He  simply  don't  do  it.  • 

[Having  reached  a  ripe  old  age,  and  seen  much  of  the 
world,  I  am  inclined  to  doubt  the  value  of  free  preaching. 
It  was  when  the  Gospel  was  heard  at  the  risk  of  life  and 
limb  that  it  was  rightly  appreciated.  I  begin  seriously  to 
think  that  if  a  stout  varlet  provided  with  an  oaken  cudgel 
were  stationed  at  the  door  of  each  of  the  churches,  and 
instructed  not  to  admit  any  one  who  refused  to  pay  half  a 
dollar  on  the  spot  and  submit  also  to  a  sound  drubbing, 
there  would  be  a  much  fuller  attendance,  and  never  any 
occasion  to  send  round  the  hat,  or  to  make  appeals  for 
home  or  foreign  missions.  But  here  it  is  not  only  fitting 
but  indispensable  for  me  to  disclaim  the  charge  recently 
made  in/  the  Bedford  Sentinel  that  it  was  through  my  in- 
strumentality and  my  money  that  the  band  of  two  hundred 
Italian  and  Spanish  brigands  who  last  year  passed  through 
the  country  parts  of  Virginia,  assassinating  every  member, 
young  and  old,  of  every  congregation  whose  minister  had 
not  been  paid  up  in  full,  was  brought  to  this  State.  I 
solemnly  declare  that  I  did  not  do  it — had  no  lot  or  part 
in  it.  At  the  same  time  I  am  delighted  that  it  was  done. 
The  places  of  the  assassinated  have  been  filled  mostly  by 
devout,  industrious,  thrifty  Scotchmen,  and  Virginia,  in 
its  rural  aspect,  is  a  different  and  better  thing.  Presby- 
terianism,  however,  is  alarmingly  on  the  increase.  But  I 
suppose  we  must  put  up  with  that.  1900.] 

[I  have  this  day  refused  peremptorily  to  subscribe  to- 
ward the  completion  of  the  Church  of  the  Spectroscope 
(on  Foushee  Street),  with  the  Vibratory  worship  of  the 
Great  First  Cause  (a  sort  of  scientific  Shaking  Quakerism), 
and  its  sacred  readings  from  Hindu  Vedas,  Norse  Sagas, 
Scandinavian  Eddas,  Emerson,  and  George  Sand,  by  a  son 
of  Moncure  D.  Conway.  No  ;  from  the  Vibratory  stand- 
point I  don't  see  that  there  is  any  more  occasion  for  a  Great 
First  Cause  than  for  a  Last  Great  Effect.  I  much  prefer 
to  worship  the  Father  who  pitieth  his  children  and  remem- 
bereth  their  infirmities.  But  very  much  more  do  I  prefer 
to  say  that  it  is  no  human  being's  business  what,  whom, 
when,  where,  how,  or  what  for  I  worship,  or  whether  I 


60  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

worship  at  all.  Whether  I  have  the  right  or  not  I  leave 
it  to  Dr.  Blank  to  determine ;  but  I  do  most  certainly 
exercise  the  right  (call  it  faculty,  if  you  will)  of  being 
just  as  skeptical  as  I  please,  and  just  as  superstitious  as  I 
please,  at  one  and  the  same  time.  Impossible !  For  you, 
yes ;  for  me,  nothing  more  natural,,  and  indeed,  unavoid- 
able. I  do'n't  know,  can't  know,  everything;  and,  as  to 
rights,  I  think  the  greatest  of  wrongs  in  this  world  is  to 
dam  up  the  thinking  apparatus,  or  rather  to  close  the 
shutters,  leaving  open  only  a  little  chink,  and  to  say, 
"  Now  I've  got  all  the  light  in  the  world,  at  least  all  that 
is  good  for  me,  and  if  I  let  in  any  more  it  will  damn  my 
soul  to  all  eternity."] 

It  may  be  that  my  lowly  birth  and  my  early  association 
with  uncultured  folk  incline  me  to  sing  by  my  lone  self 
"How  firm  a  foundation"  rather  than  join  young  Mr. 
Conway  when  he  plays  from  the  pulpit  on  a  silver  sax- 
horn what  he  calls  the  "Holy  Galop,"  (composed  ex- 
pressly for  Mr.  C.  by  Gungl,  or  Bungl,  or  Dungl,  or  some 
other  vibratory  Dutchman) ;  at  all  events,  I  do  sing  it 
with  my  whole  heart,  whenever  I  feel  like  it,  and  intend 
to  keep  on  singing  it  whenever  I  feel  like  it,  in  spite  of 
all  the  Conways  and  Spectroscopes  in  existence. 


EIGHTH   INSTALLMENT. 

Mr.  Pigskin  on  Immigration — Adams  Hints  at  Empire — Ten  Thousand 
Dollars  each  to  Fifteen  Hundred  Girls — Bad  Consequences  of  Good 
Intentions — Excitement  in  Virginia — Adams  Hated — Regarded  as  an 
Active  Intransitive  Fool — Gov.  Kemper — Expensive  Joke  on  Wife — 
A  Lesson  to  Husbands — Rev.  Dr.  Peterkin — Venom  without  Spon- 
dulics. 

ABOUT  this  time — I  think  it  was  about  this  time  (my 
memory  is  not  failing  me,  but  I  am  much  occupied  of  late, 
and  besides,  the  chronological  order  of  my  benefactions 
or  non-benefactions  is  not  so  important  after  all) — I  was 
approached  by  a  large  delegation  composed  of  some  of 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  6l 

the  leading  men  of  Richmond  and,  indeed,  of  the  whole 
State.  I  could  see  by  the  way  they  took  off  their  hats 
that  they  wanted  money. 

"Gentlemen,"  said  I,  testily,  without  waiting  for  the 
spokesman  to  open  his  mouth,  "Gentlemen,  you  cannot 
be  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Binford  is  the  proper  per- 
son to  apply  to.  My  time  is  val " 

"Strike,  but  hear  us,"  pompously  interrupted  Mr.  Felix 
Pigskin,  principal  citizen  of  the  period. 

"Say  on,"  was  my  submissive  answer,  as  I  settled  my- 
self back  in  my  arm-chair  and  adjusted  my  trumpet. 

"You  desire  to  do  good  to  Virginia?"  inquired  Mr.  P. 
I  nodded  assent. 

"And  have  been  uniformly  thankful  for  suggestions 
looking  to  that  end.  Your  patience  and  humility- " 

"Come  to  the  point  without  compliment,  Mr.  P." 

"Well,  then,  sir,  being  for  the  time  being  the  honored 
voice  of  Virginia,  I  am  requested,  and  in  fact  instructed, 
to  say,  that  in  no  manner  whatever  can  you  so  well 
serve  the  State  whose  soil  your  birth  has  hon " 

"Oh,  pish!" 

" ored,  as  by  aiding  and  abetting  with  your  ample 

means  the  cause  of  immigration." 

"And  that  is  the  object  of  your  visit?" 

"It  is." 

"Then,  gentlemen,  let  me  say,  in  all  kindness  and 
frankness,  that  your  mission  is  a  vain  one.  If  Mr.  Bin- 
ford  has  a  few  thousands  to  spare,  you  are  most  heartily 
welcome  to  them,  but  the  matter  rests  absolutely  with  him, 
not  with  me.  Anxious  as  I  have  proved  myself  to  be  to 
serve  the  State — indeed,  I  have  little  else  to  live  for — I 
am  still  constrained  to  think  that  money  will  be  wasted  in 
the  attempt  to  transplant  full-grown  trees  or  men  to  worn- 
out  soil." 

"  But  the  deep  plowing  of  stalwart  Yankee-British  arms 
will  bring  up  new  soil." 

"True,  quite  true;  but  perfect  candor  compels  me  to 
say  that  the  real  Virginian,  being  a  product  of  slave  society, 
and  of  slave  society  only,  cannot  be  reproduced  under  any 
other  conditions  whatsoever,  and  it  is  not  my  desire,  how- 
ever much  it  may  be  to  the  interest  of  land-owners,  to  see 

6 


62  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

the  few  remaining  Virginians  supplanted  any  quicker  than 
they  would  be  and  ought  to  be  by  the  natural  course  of 
events.  That  another  and  a  very  different  race  (perhaps 
very  much  better  race,  but  not  better  to  me)  will  in  time 
reclaim  our  lapsed  lands,  and  that  the  day  will  come  when 
the  shores  of  our  American  Mediterranean,  the  Chesapeake 
Bay,  will  teem  with  cities  and  population  I  make  no  doubt, 
but  the  first  indispensable  step  to  that  result  is  the  removal 
from  the  settler  of  an  incubus  that  weighs  down  to  the 
earth  every  inhabitant,  native  or  foreign-born,  of  Virginia. 
I  mean  the  State  debt.  Get  that  paid  by  the  central  gov- 
ernment, accept  the  fact  of  empire  with  all  its  unpleasant 
consequences  to  us  of  this  generation,  and  then,  but  not 
till  then,  will  it  be  worth  your  while  to  incite  immigration 
by  solicitation — not  the  best  way  any  way.  If  you  have 
so  very  good  a  thing  in  this  climate,  soil,  latitude,  prox- 
imity to  the  sea,  etc.,  the  world,  I  should  think,  would 
not  be  slow  to  find  it  out.  In  this  day  of  telegraphs,  light 
cannot  be  hid  under  a  bushel.  But  until  the  debt  is  as- 
sumed by  the  true  debtor,  and  the  only  one  able  to  pay 
it,  money  spent  for  immigration  purposes  will  be  money 
thrown  away.  Good-morning,  gentlemen." 

They  withdrew,  not  in  the  best  of  humors. 

Binford,  if  I  can  be  certain  of  the  fact,  gave  them  a 
trifle  of  ten  or  twenty  thousand  dollars,  but  no  one  has 
yet  told  me  that  much  good  came  of  it. 

"  Conceited  old  ass,  he  thinks  because  he's  got  money 
that  he's  got  more  sense  than  all  the  world  put  together. 
By  George  !  don't  I  remember  the  day,  here  in  Richmond, 
when,  by  universal  acknowledgment,  he  was  regarded  as 
the  most  active,  intransitive  fool  in  Virginia!" 

So  said  one  of  the  delegates  as  they  left  my  office;  and 
his  opinion,  I  had  too  much  reason  to  know,  was  for  a  long 
time  the  general  opinion  in  the  State.  Men,  feeling  the 
weight  of  my  wealth,  did  not  give  open  expression  to  their 
opinions,  but  I  could  see  it  in  their  eyes ;  the  newspapers 
had  got  after  me,  too,  and  I  suffered.  Living,  and  desiring 
only  to  live  in  order  to  give  pleasure  to  my  brother- Vir- 
ginians, I  could  not  bear  their  ill  will,  even  when  I  knew 
that  they  were  wrong  and  I  was  right. 

But  the  delegate  was  not  wrong  in  his  assertion.     I  was 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  63 

conceited,  and  ray  money  had  made  me  so  in  spite  of 
myself.  General  deference  to  my  opinions  and  the  power 
of  carrying  out  my  views  at  times  elevated  my  self-esteem 
to  an  inordinate  degree,  I  doubt  not.  Very  often  I  could 
not  dispossess  myself  of  the  belief  that  I  had  made  my  fifty 
millions  with  my  own  hands  or  by  my  own  sagacity;  at 
any  rate  I  felt  that  I  deserved  them,  being  such  a  good 
man,  and  that  uplifted  me  mightily  in  my  own  eyes.  It 
took  visit  after  visit  to  the  woods  to  cure  and  humble  me. 
The  measureless  and  inexhaustible  force  of  nature,  its  utter 
indifference  (in  the  midst  of  great  love)  to  what  we  call 
great  or  small,  finally  brought  me  back  again  all  safe,  sim- 
ple, and  unconceited. 

[I  now  think  I  ought  to  have  given  a  couple  of  hundred 
thousand  towards  immigration ;  funds  were  getting  low, 
considering  what  remained  to  be  done,  but  I  could  have 
better  stood  the  loss  of  ten  times  that  amount  than  the 
averted  look  of  one  unfriendly  eye.  I  care  too  much  for 
public  opinion.] 

As  when  the  State  declined  to  accept  my  proposition  to 
build  a  new  capitol,  so  now,  when  I  felt  constrained  to 
decline  giving  money  to  promote  immigration,  I  con- 
sidered that  I  had  added  just  that  much  more  to  my  prin- 
cipal, and  accordingly  proceeded  to  spend  it  with  a  good 
deal  of  glee,  as  a  poor  fellow  often  does  when  a  windfall 
of  a  few  dollars  comes  to  him.  The  scheme  was  not 
wholly  my  own,  but  was  suggested  to  me  by  one  of  my 
most  trusted  and  sensible  agents.  It  was,  in  a  few  words, 
to  give  in  fee  simple  ten  thousand  dollars  cash  to  each  of 
fifteen  hundred  girls  (so  many  to  each  county,  city,  and 
town)  on  the  day  they  got  married  to  some  strong,  healthy, 
handsome,  sensible,  good-natured,  sober,  industrious 
young  man,  who  had  proved  himself  to  be  a  good  son  and 
brother — the  girls  to  be  just  as  healthy,  sweet,  well  formed, 
pretty,  modest,  and  dutiful  as  the  boys.  The  proposition, 
as  soon  as  its  sincerity  became  known  beyond  all  cavil, 
produced  an  excitement  the  like  of  which  was  never,  as  I 
honestly  believe,  witnessed  in  any  part  of  the  civilized 
world — no,  not  even  in  time  of  war.  Words  quite  fail 
me  to  describe  it.  "What  is  healthy?"  "Who  is 
pretty?"  "  What  does  he  call  good-natured ?"  "Who 


64  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

is  to  decide  about  being  well  formed?"  etc.,  etc.,  etc., 
etc. 

In  vain  I  protested  that  I  had  nothing  on  earth  to  do 
with  defining  or  deciding  anything.  The  State  was  in  an 
inconceivable  ferment.  I  was  bedeviled  almost  to  death, 
and  finally  had  to  run  away  to  Canada  to  get  rid  of  the 
clamor ;  and  even  there  I  was  beset.  "  Let  the  girls  in 
each  county  call  a  convention,  and  leave  it  to  the  county 
judge,  a  board  of  physicians,  the  overseers  of  the  poor, 
the  county  surveyor,  anybody,  anybody,  Lord,  for  the 
sake  of  peace." 

No,  they  wouldn't  hear  to  that — they  wouldn't  hear  to 
anything,  until  at  length  Governor  Kemper,f  being  ap- 
pealed to,  decided  that  there  was  but  one  way  to  settle  it, 
and  that  was  by  lottery  in  each  county,  etc.  But  then 
the  money  was  not  to  be  paid  till  the  day  of  marriage — • 
how  about  that?  It  was  even  so — that  was  in  the  bond. 

Well,  such  a  demand  for  young  men,  such  attention  to 
even  decently  respectable  young  men,  on  the  part  of  im- 
pecunious parents,  such  beautiful  eyes  cast  at  young  men, 
such  running  away  to  distant  States  of  young  men  who 
didn't  want  to  marry  anybody,  such  indignation  and 
drawing  back  of  young  ladies  who  wanted  neither  money 
nor  husbands,  but  wanted  to  do  just  as  they  pleased  and 
marry  just  when  it  suited  them,  such  fun,  excitement, 
bickerings,  jealousies,  fights,  and  family  quarrels  when 
the  marriages  did  take  place,  were  never  seen,  heard,  or 
dreamed  of.  Virginia  was  a  most  unhappy  State  until 
the  thing  played  out  and  the  money  set  apart  was  ex- 
pended to  the  very  last  dollar.  It  was  a  sad  ending  of 
what  I  thought  a  good  scheme.  Old  people  sometimes 
allude  to  it  as  the  run-mad  scheme,  but  it  has  been  gene- 
rally forgotten. 

I  am  glad,  though,  .that  I  tried  it.  It  satisfied  me  that 
the  plan  I  had  been  practicing,  from  the  time  I  got  my 
fifty  millions,  of  helping  deserving  young  couples  in  the 
quietest  possible  manner,  was  the  best,  indeed  the  only 
practical  plan.  But  some  of  the  wilder  young  fellows  did 

fA  good,  honest,  solid,  upright,  black-bearded,  badly-by-Yankees- 
wounded,  Madison  county  man  of  the  period. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  6$ 

have  what  they  called  a  high  old  time,  and  certainly  if 
there  is  fun  in  excitement  there  was  excitement  enqugh  in 
Virginia  for  about  two  and  a  half  years. 

[The  State  hasn't  yet  recovered  from  the  furious  family 
feuds  occasioned  by  my  well-meant,  but  ill-judged,  action 
in  this  matter,  and  never  will  in  my  day.  The  worst- 
hated  man  in  Virginia,  by  fully  two- thirds  of  the  people, 
is  myself.] 

But  to  return  to  my  building. 

My  wife,  the  most  sensible  woman  I  ever  knew  (my 
acquaintance  is  limited),  soon  after  my  good  fortune  came 
from  heaven,  said  to  me, — 

"Moses,  because  we  are  rich  that's  no  reason  we  should 
be  fools." 

"W-e-11,  I  don't  know  about  that." 

"  Come,  don't  try  to  be  sarcastic,  or  I'll  say  some- 
thing presently  that'll  make  you  wish  you  had  never 
married " 

"I  often  wish  that." 

"a  woman  that  isn't  quite  as  big  a  ninny  as  you  are. 
But  what  I  mean  is  this :  that  there  is  no  sense  in  our 
building  a  huge  brick  advertisement  of  the  fact  that  we 
have  money.  Every  rich  man  does  that.  My  idea  is  to 
have  two  spare  chambers  for  our  friends — I  suspect  we'll 
have  a  good  many  now — and  that's  all.  Of  course  the 
house  will  be  as  well  furnished,  tasteful,  and  comfortable 
as  possible.  A  small,  perfectly  equipped  house,  that's 
what  we  want.  The  more  house  the  more  servants  and 
trouble  about  cleaning  and  keeping  clean — don't  you 
think  so?" 

"Yes'm,"  said  I,  meekly. 

"You  are  such  a  goose !  But  I  certainly — no,  Virginia 
says  'certainly'  all  the  time — I  do  really  like  you  as  much 
— as  much — as  much  as  you  liked  me  the  day  cousin  Susan 
Brown  sent  me  fifty  dollars." 

The  upshot  of  it  was  that  we  bought  the  house  that 
Rev.  Dr.  Minnegerode  lived  in  in  1874 — on  Clay  Street, 
I  rather  think  (but  the  fact  is,  my  memory  for  names, 
dates,  places,  and  things  never  was  good),  modernized 
and  mansarded  it  (Mrs.  Johnson  Jackson  assured  me  that 
no  respectable  person  from  the  upper  ends  of  Franklin 

6* 


66  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

and  Grace  would  ever  visit  me  if  I  did  not  mansard  it), 
and  made  it  snug  in  every  way.  It  became  a  pleasant 
place  to  visit  about  dinner-time.  I  insisted  on  buying 
this  particular  house,  because  I  had  often  picked  it  out  in 
my  days  of  poverty  as  perhaps  the  only  place  in  which  a 
man  could  find  a  home  and  at  the  same  time  repose  from 
the  women  and  children.  This  I  got  by  building  a  two- 
story  office  at  the  lower  end  of  the  garden,  where  I  could 
be  out  of  the  reach  of  feminine  and  juvenile  jargon  and 
intrusion,  and  where  I  could  have  at  any  time  what  Dr. 
Howland  (a  scientific  lecturer  of  the  period)  would  call 
"  a  general  view  of  the  valley" — the  vale  of  Butchertown, 
to  wit. 

We  did  have  a  good  deal  of  company.  People  seemed, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  to  be  fond  of  us.  Often,  a  little 
too  often  I  thought,  my  wife  and  myself  were  forced  to 
ascend  to  the  mansard  and  swelter  there,  which  made 
me  bless  the  mansard  and  wish  I  could  have  my  family  to  ' 
myself  as  in  the  days  when,  perhaps  owing  to  my  poverty, 
people  were  not  so  fond  of  us.  However,  it  was  a  great 
delight  to  have  those  we  really  loved  (my  wife  had  a  pro- 
digious width  as  well  as  depth  of  affection)  with  us,  to 
make  them  as  comfortable  as  kings  and  queens,  and  to 
give  them  dinners  that  were  fit  for  something  a  great  deal 
better  than  gods.  Jupiter  never  ate  a  good  dinner  in  his 
life,  the  truth  being  that  J.  was  not  born  in  Lynchburg. 
The  dinners  were  so  delightful  that  I  look  back  to  them 
as  the  happiest  hours  of  my  life.  Happiest !  no  ;  I  will 
tell  you  ere  long  what  hours  were  really  the  happiest  of 
all.  To  be  sure,  I  could  retreat  to  my  office  at  night, 
when  the  house  was  full,  and  enjoy  the  moonlit  valley 
aforenamed  to  the  full.  But  this  was  not  being  at  home. 
Finally,  my  wife  bought  a  couple  of  houses  in  the  neigh- 
borhood and  placed  them  at  the  service  of  surplus  and 
not  agreeable  company.  This  was  all  very  well ;  it  relieved 
the  pressure  without  touching  too  deeply  on  my  privy 
purse  (Binford,  his  female  coadjutor,  and  my  public 
enterprises  having  cut  me  down  to  less  than  half  a  million 
a  year  for  individual  and  household  expenses),  but  when, 
day  after  day,  I  came  home  only  to  find  my  house  a 
livery-stable,  as  it  were,  or  hack-stand,  my  wife  having 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  67 

ordered,  in  addition  to  our  private  vehicles,  from  six  to 
eight  others  daily,  to  be  sent  hither  and  thither  for  the 
use  of  this  or  that  sick  friend,  or  for  some  friend  who  was 

not  sick,  but  would  "enjoy  a  ride  so" .  When  I  saw 

this  I  got  mad,  as  husbands  will  do,  and  determined  to 
make  her  sick  of  the  carriage  business.  Accordingly,  I 
bolted  off  in  hot  haste,  fully  bent  on  buying  every  carriage, 
hack,  buggy,  and  thing  of  the  kind  in  town  ;  but  as  I 
walked  on  I  cooled  down  a  little  and  contented  myself 
with  the  purchase  of  one  hundred  and  seven  hacks,  carry- 
alls, rockaways,  phaetons,  coupes,  drags,  buggies,  gigs, 
single-chairs,  drays,  tumbril  carts,  etc.,  etc.,  including 
sixteen  omnibuses,  four  furniture-wagons,  a  milk-cart, 
and  two  wheelbarrows,  with  horses  and  mules  to  match, 
goats  also  for  the  wheelbarrows,  and  ordered  them  all  to 
assemble  simultaneously  at  my  front  door  the  next  day  at 
twelve  o'clock. 

"Now,  old  lady,"  thinks  I,  "if  you  don't  get  your 
digestive  apparatus  full  of  wheeled  vehicles  for  poor  folks, 
then  I'll  agree  to  eat  all  the  omnibuses,  and  half  the 
goats." 

The  scene  next  day  was  a  refreshing  one.  For  several 
squares  the  street  was  blocked  up  with  carriages  and 
things,  and  an  immense  crowd  of  wondering  people 
gathered  immediately  to  see  what  the  matter  was. 

"It  can't  be  a  funeral,"  said  the  people,  "for  there 
is  the  milk-cart.  Whoever  heard  of  a  milk-cart  at  a 
funeral?" 

As  driver  after  driver  came  up,  knocked,  and  an- 
nounced that  his  vehicle  had  been  bought  and  paid  for, 
and  ordered  to  come  at  twelve  o'clock  for  Mrs.  Adams's 
commands  (I  poked  my  head  out  of  a  mansard '  room, 
where  I  had  hid  myself,  and  watched  the  whole  affair), 
the  state  of  that  good  woman's  mind  may  be  imagined. 
She  sent  for  twenty  policemen  to  disperse  the  vehicles 
and  the  mob,  but  the  policemen,  finding  that  there  had 
been  a  bona  fide  purchase  of  the  vehicles,  and  that  the 
drivers  had  actually  received  orders  to  assemble,  could 
do  nothing.  Mrs.  A.  was  in  despair.  She  sent  for  the 
Mayor,  but  he  too  was  powerless.  Made  desperate  by 
the  frightful  aspect  of  affairs,  for  the  mob  had  now  in- 


68  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

creased  to  many  thousands,  she  said  to  the  Mayor,  "  If 
these  drivers  have  been  directed  to  obey  my  commands, 
will  you  see  that  my  commands  are  executed  to  the 
letter?" 

"Most  assuredly,  madam." 

"  Then  I  command  these  drivers  to  drive  their  vehicles 
to  the  nearest  auction  store,  and  there  sell  the  vehicles, 
horses,  etc.,  immediately  to  the  highest  bidder,  and  you, 
Mr.  Keiley,  are  to  receive  the  proceeds  of  the  sale,  and 
turn  them  over  in  full  to  Dr.  Peterkin's*  fair,  now  being 
held  at  No.  ,  Main  street." 

It  was  done,  and  I  never  got  mad  with  my  wife  any 
more — at  least  not  to  that  tune.  I  think  she  told  me 
that  the  church  realized'  some  eleven  thousand  dollars 
from  the  sale. 

Of  all  the  vehicles,  she  reserved  but  one — a  choice 
dray,  thirty  feet  long,  and  drawn  by  seven  tomato-catsup- 
colored  mules ;  so  convenient,  she  said,  for  moving  at 
one  haul  all  the  furniture  of  any  poor  friend  who  wanted 
to  move. 

And  a  shave-tail  mule,  from  that  day  to  this,  gives  me 
facial  neuralgia,  accompanied  by  symptoms  of  trichina 
spiralis. 

[Other  men  have  confessed  to  me  that  they,  too,  have 
often  wished  to  pile  bonnets,  boas,  redingotes,  or  other 
special  weaknesses  of  their  wives,  upon  their  heads  until 
they  were  suffocated,  or  nearly  so.  But  being  men  of 
feeble  feelings  and  little  money,  they  could  not  vent 
such  rage  as  mine  with  the  pecuniary  violence  exhibited 
above.  They  have  the  venom,  but  not  the  spondulics. 
Perhags  it  is  well.] 


*  Rev.  Joshua  Peterkin — a  true  Christian — a  man  of  God,  if  ever  I 
knew  one.  (The  joke  is,  that  Dr.  P.  never  countenanced  fairs. — Ed. 
Whig.) 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS,  69 


NINTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Sad  Results  of  an  Explosion — Drs.  Cullen  and  McGuire — Happy  Re- 
section of  a  Steeple — Burwell  Music  Hall — Great  Fiddling  Festival — A 
Treat  for  Pretty  Girls — Happiest  Time  of  Old  Adams's  Life — Gen. 
Richardson  and  Col.  Sherwin  McRae — Adams's  Patent  Lecture-Halls 
— Judge  Waller  Stapler — "Johnny  Reb." 

[FROM  this  point  onward  the  old  man's  style,  rough  at 
best,  gets  more  and  more  incoherent ;  he  repeats  himself, 
and  is  utterly  regardless  of  the  rules  of  construction — his 
interpolations  and  foot-notes  increase  in  number,  and  be- 
come almost  vexatious,  indicating  the  inevitable  decay 
of  the  powers  of  mind  and  body. — Ed.  Whig.~\ 

It  was  a  well-timed  thing  in  me  to  buy  the  City  Hall, 
Dr.  Preston's  Church,  etc.,  just  when  I  did.  The  people 
had  entertained  much  unamiable  emotion  in  regard  to 
the  edifice  first  named,  which  had  been  reported  to  be 
unsafe.  Judge  Guigon*  they  said  was  inclined  to  be, 
not  severe — that  would  be  too  strong  a  word — but  a  little 
brash ;  the  Common  Council  exhibited  the  usual,  but 
not  more  than  the  usual,  defectiveness  of  common  sense, 
and  an  odor  approximating  the  job-stench  pervaded  the 
atmosphere. 

When  I  attempted  to  pull  down  the  walls  of  the  said- 
to-be-unsound  City  Hall,  nitro-glycerine  had  to  be  used, 
and  with  most  disastrous  results.  The  Broad  Street  Meth- 
odist Church  steeple  was  completely  skinned  of  its  slate 
scales,  and  so  badly  cracked  that  it  was  carried  at  a  right- 
shoulder  shift  for  nearly  eighteen  months.  Architects 
having  given  it  up  as  a  hopeless  case,  Drs.  Cullen  and 
McGuire  were  called  in,  and  after  a  vain  attempt  to  re- 
duce the  luxation,  flooded  the  body  of  the  building  with 
chloroform,  and  performed  the  operation  of  resection 
with  the  happiest  results.  The  explosion  also  produced 
a  violent  irritation  of  the  neck  of  the  pool  or  baptistery 

*  His  first  name  was  Alexander — a  worthy,  good  man  of  the  period, 
endowed  with  a  stout  judicial  spine.  He  wore  a  standing  collar  and 
a  large  black  silk  cravat  of  the  Ridgway  pattern  to  the  very  last. 


•jo  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

of  Dr.  Burrows's  church,  which  caused  it  to  leak  un- 
healthily until  sugar-of-lead  pipes  were  introduced.  A 
cure  soon  followed.  Thereupon  everybody  admired  his 
own  wisdom,  and  said,  "Didn't  I  tell  you  so — didn't  I? 
I  knew  what  I  was  talking  about ;  and  I  always  said  that 
five  thousand  dollars  would  make  the  City  Hall  bran 
new,  and  strong  enough  to  last  a  thousand  years."  • 

But  as  everybody  had  said  that,  nobody,  not  even  the 
councilmen,  felt  badly. 

It  will  be  recollected  that  in  the  Valentine  House 
Square  the  Virginia  Historical  Society  building  stood, 
and  Ford's  Hotel  Square  was  occupied  by  Brice  Church, 
enough  space  being  left  in  both  squares  for  green  sward 
and  a  number  of  graceful  trees.  In  the  Central  Square, 
after  the  City  Hall  was  blown  down,  and  the  other  build- 
ings removed,  rose  the  massive  and  beautiful  Music  Hall, 
also  with  its  green  sward  and  trees.  I  did  not  call  it  an 
Academy  of  Music,  because  it  was  not,  and  was  never  in- 
tended to  be  an  academy.  Music  was  not  taught  there, 
nor  had  the  building  any  connection  near  or  remote 
with  Academus,  after  whom  so  many  Northern  musical 
shebangs  were  in  my  day  strangely  and  unwittingly  mis- 
named— a  fact  which  wholly  escaped  the  notice  of  the 
Richmond  Dispatch.  There  was  simply  what  its  name 
implied,  a  hall  for  popular  concerts  of  vocal  and  instru- 
mental music.  In  planning  the  hall,  I  was  greatly  aided 
by  Mr.  N.  B.  Clapp,  and  a  few  other  gentlemen  of  taste  ; 
in  truth,  after  giving  them  an  outline  of  my  ideas,  I  left 
the  matter  wholly  in  their  charge.  The  public  and  my- 
self were  well  pleased  with  their  work.  The  room  is 
noble  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term — lofty,  airy,  frescoed 
with  exquisite  taste,  ornamented  with  busts  and  statues 
of  the  greatest  composers,  placed  at  appropriate  intervals 
in  niches,  with  abundant  light  by  day,  and  glorious  at 
night  with  jets  and  chandeliers.  No  handsomer  build- 
ing, until  my  cathedral  was  finished,  ornamented  the 
city.  It  was  named  Burwell  Hall,  in  honor  of  my 
friend,  Miss  Kate  Burwell,*  a  charming  musician. 

*  Married  a  country  doctor  of  the  period,  and  I  regard  most  country 
doctors  so  far  superior  to  the  average  preacher  that  there  is  no  use  o' 
talking. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  7! 

While  the  hall  was  in  process  of  construction,  I  entered 
into  negotiations  with  Theodore  Thomas  with  the  view 
of  engaging  him  and  his  orchestra  to  reside  permanently 
in  Richmond,  but  this  could  not  be  done,  the  field  being 
too  small  for  him.  Nor  would  he  agree  to  come  more 
than  twice  during  the  winter,  that  is  to  say,  the  first  week 
in  December  and  the  last  in  February,  and  even  then  he 
would  not  consent  to  remain  more  than  three  days  each 
time,  although  I  was  willing  to  pay  him  any  sum  within 
reason  for  doing  so.  But  before  the  hall  was  completed, 
arrangements  had  been  made  by  which  concerts,  and  oc- 
casionally operas,  of  the  first  order  of  merit,  should  be 
given  every  fortnight  during  the  winter,  all  the  expenses 
of  which  were  paid  out  of  the  endowment.  I  made  but 
one  stipulation  with  the  management,  and  that  was  that 
the  programmes  should  invariably  be  so  arranged  as  to 
please  the  audiences  and  gradually  to  elevate  their  musi- 
cal taste — the  rule  theretofore  being  to  make  out  the  pro- 
grammes in  New  York,  with  selections  adapted  to  a  very 
few  well-educated  musical  people,  while  the  mass  were 
compelled  to  sit  by  and  pretend  to  enjoy  what  they  could 
not  possibly  comprehend.  The  sight  of  these  anxious 
fools  (of  whom  I  was  one)  looking  into  the  faces  of 
educated  musicians  to  find  when  the  time  came  to  be 
in  raptures,  had  so  often  made  me  sick  that  I  was  deter- 
mined to  do  away  with  it  forever,  at  Burwell  Hall,  any- 
how. 

[I  recall  now  with  grim  delight  the  fury  into  which  the 
virtuosi  were  thrown  when  the  hall  was  inaugurated  with  a 
real  old-fashioned  Virginia  fiddling  jubilee — not  intended 
as  any  reflection  upon  the  Peace  (accurately  peace)  Jubilee 
in  Boston — which  lasted  five  days.  Curdsville  College 
came  down  in  a  body,  President  George  Walker  at  the 
head;  all  the  famous  white  and  black  fiddlers  in  the  State 
attended  and  made  exhibition  of  their  skill;  and  such  a 
riproarious  time  was  had  as  was  never  had  in  Richmond 
before  or  since.  The  people  got.  blind  drunk  with  jigs 
and  reels  and  whisky.  Many  marriages  occurred  soon 
afterwards.  The  solos  by  Mr.  James  A.  Cowardin,  Mr. 
Henry  Lubbock,  and  Mr.  Arthur  Gooch,  were  pronounced 
not  inferior  to  the  best  Curdsville  performances;  and  the 


72  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

memorial  ode  to  Ruffin's  band,  recited  by  Mr.  Henry 
Hudnall,  set  to  music  by  Madison  Chamberlayne,  was 
sung  throughout  the  State  for  years  afterwards.  The  in- 
augural address  was  made  by  Mayor  Keiley.*] 

Music  being  heaven  itself,  or  the  nearest  thing  to  it, 
except,  perhaps,  a  sweetheart's  first  kiss,  I  always  intended 
that  the  concerts  at  Burwell  Hall  should  be  as  free  as 
heaven's  air.  But  this  I  soon  found  would  never  do. 
The  vulgus  had  to  be  kept  out.  The  price  of  admission, 
therefore,  was  fixed  at  a  sum  sufficient  to  effect  that  end — 
say  seventy-five  cents — and  the  money  thus  obtained  was 
devoted  to  the  education  of  poor  youth  of  both  sexes  who 
showed  decided  musical  talent.  But  whenever  there  was 
a  pretty,  sweet  girl,  or  a  girl  that  was  sweet  and  not  pretty, 
who  wanted  to  go  to  the  concerts,  and  didn't  have  the 
seventy-five  cents,  you  may  be  sure  she  not  only  went  but 
got  one  of  the  best  seats  in  the  house.  And  inasmuch  as 
girls  (until  they  get  married,  after  which  they  are  apt  to 
be  a  shade  stingy  to  everybody  but  their  husbands  and 
children)  are  naturally  generous  and  do  not  like  to  be  re- 
ceiving all  the  time,  even  from  their  beaux  and  fathers,  I 
provided  that  they  should  always  select  their  own  escorts, 
who  went  in  free  of  charge  also.  The  trouble  was  to  dis- 
tribute the  tickets  so  as  not  to  give  offense.  Remembering 
the  dowry  business,  and  unwilling  to  incur  any  more 
odium  than  I  already  endured,  I  intrusted  the  distribution 
to  two  excellent  old  gentlemen,  in  whose  generosity  and 
discretion  I  had  all  confidence,  and  whose  uniform  courtesy 
and  uprightness  (brought  down  from  a  better  age)  I  had 
long  secretly  but  greatly  admired — I  mean  General  W.  H. 
Richardson  and  Col.  Sherwin  McRae.  As  it  was  a  ticklish 
business,  I  paid  them  largely  for  it.  They  did  their  duty 
faithfully  and  thoroughly  well,  avoiding  the  breakers  on 
which  I  had  been  wrecked  in  the  matter  of  dowries.  How 
the  young  girls  did  love  them  !  Unwilling  to  limit  their 
tickets  to  the  City  of  Richmond,  they  requested  permis- 
sion to  send  them  to  the  country,  and  that  the  editors  of 


*  A  worthy  good  man  of  the  period,  partly  Irish,  except  as  to  his  eye- 
glasses. First  name  Anthony,  afterwards  called  Ant'ny  Over,  or  N'over, 
for  short,  because  he  was  elected  mayor  over  and  over  again. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


73 


the  country  papers  should  be  the  medium  through  which 
the  tickets  should  go.  I  readily  accepted  so  sensible  a 
proposition.  An  increase  in  the  circulation  of  country 
papers  was  soon  observable,  and  we  had  at  the  concerts 
some  such  girls  as  grow  in  no  other  part  of  this  world  but 
in  old  Virginia — dear,  gentle,  sweet,  pure  lily-buds  and 
blush-roses  of  life,  sinless  as  children  or  angels.  Ah,  my 
God  !  how  they  enjoyed  the  music.  Sitting  at  my  place 
in  the  parquette,  I  would  look  up  into  their  faces  glorified 
with  delight,  and — yes,  these  were  the  happiest  hours  of 
my  life.  General  R.  and  Colonel  McR.  never  allowed 
one  of  them  or  their  lovers  or  attendants,  whoever  they 
might  be,  in  coming  to,  staying  in,  or  going  from  the 
city,  to  pay  a  cent ;  everything  was  paid  for  them.  Most 
of  the  editors  sent  down  delightful  girls.  But  Sandy 
Garber,  from  time  to  time,  by  way  of  variety,  transmitted 
some  mountain  specimens  that  were — were — I  be  dog  if  I 
know  how  to  tell  what  they  were.  It  was  a  treat,  though, 
to  the  rest  of  the  audience  to  behold  them  and  watch 
their  bewilderment. 

The  pleasure  which  General  Richardson  and  Colonel 
McRae*  derived  from  their  new  occupation  prolonged 
their  lives  to  an  indefinite  period.  My  memory  is  a  little 
treacherous,  and  my  books  of  reference  not  accessible, 
and  so  I  will  not  undertake  to  say  precisely  how  long  they 
lived.  Never  before  in  the  history  of  the  world,  I  dare 
be  sworn,  were  ticket  agents  so  universally  beloved. 

About  this  time  Judge  Staples,  f  of  the  Court  of  Appeals, 
came  to  me  and  said, — 

"Moses,  it  does  seem  hard  that  with  all  your  money 


*  Colonel  McRae  never  did  die.  As  time  went  on  he  became  quite 
unhefty,  and  while  attempting  to  reach  the  Capitol  one  March  morning 
encountered  a  northwest  wind  that  blew  him  over  into  the  wilderness  of 
Manchester,  which  made  the  pursuit  and  recovery  of  him  unavailing. 
Transient  gleams  of  him  are  reported  to  have  been  seen  as  he  shot 
through  Isle  of  Wight,  and  afterwards  went  out  to  sea  off  Currituck 
Sound,  and  it  is  believed  by  many  that  he  is  still  thistling  it  around  the 
globe  in  a  short  cloak  and  gum  shoes,  with  a  small  dusty  package  of 
State  papers  in  his  hand. 

f  First  name  Waller.  A  fine,  sensible,  strong-faced  Montgomery  man 
of  the  period — very  dear  to  me  because  he  had  given  me  during  the  war 
some  of  the  best  apple  brandy  that  ever  entered  the  mouth  of  man. 

D 


74  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

and  your  lavish  generosity,  you  have  never  thought  of 
doing  anything  for  the  Court  of  Appeals." 

"Judge,"  said  I,  "you  are  out  of  your  reckoning.  I 
have  thought  about  the  Court  of  Appeals,  thought  a  great 
deal — thought  so  much  that  I  am  inclined  to  say  outright 
that  the  court  ought  to  have  the  whole  capitol  to  itself." 

"  What !"  exclaimed  the  judge,  opening  his  eyes  wide, 
"what  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

"I'll  tell  you  fifty  years  hence."  [His  opinion  seems 
to  have  been  that  the  legislature  should  be  abolished,  and 
the  affairs  of  the  State  intrusted  solely  to  the  courts — 
all  legislation  for  Virginia  and  the  other  States,  especially 
of  the  South,  being  transferred  to  Washington. — Ed. 
Whig.~\  "All  I  can  now  say  is  that,  much  as  the  legislature 
has  abused  me  for  offering  to  build  a  new  capitol,  there 
are  too  many  good  and  sensible  fellows  in  that  body  to 
refuse  to  put  at  no  distant  day  you,  the  Circuit  Court,  and 
the  two  libraries  in  the  enlarged,  mansarded,  fire-proof, 
and  glass-domed  governor's  house." 

"Ah,  my  dear  boy,"  said  the  judge,  with  a  sigh,  "that 
is  a  long  time  off,  I  fear.  Come,  plank  down  twenty  or 
twenty-five  thousand." 

"  No,  judge ;  I've  literally  not  one  dollar  to  spare,  nor 
has  Binford.  But  you'll  get  your  new  court-room  sooner 
than  you  fancy." 

[So  it  turned  out.  Before  the  fall  of  1877,  on  the  site 
of  the  old  executive  mansion,  there  was  a  very  admirable 
edifice  containing  the  Supreme  and  Circuit  Courts,  the 
law  and  literary  libraries,  a  room  for  the  Virginia  Histori- 
cal Society,  etc. ,  etc. ,  which  was  a  comfort  and  convenience 
to  everybody  in  and  out  of  the  General  Assembly,  and 
a  most  elegant  addition  to  the  architectural  beauties  of  the 
Capitol  Square.] 

Underneath  Burwell  Hall  was  another  hall  nearly  as 
large,  which  I  devoted  to  the  use  of  wandering  lecturers 
and- readers  who  had  neither  the  means  of  paying  rent  nor 
the  reputation  to  insure  paying  audiences.  Although 
there  were  not  many  of  these  creatures  left  (a  fortunate 
thing  for  the  human  race),  I  regarded  them  as  a  greatly 
afflicted  and  afflicting  set,  and  peculiarly  in  need  of  my 
care.  Therefore  I  caused  to  be  made  a  most  ingenious 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


75 


series  of  screens,  which,  being  touched  with  a  spring, 
moved  swiftly  and  silently  up  to  and  around  the  audience, 
so  that  no  matter  how  small  it  might  be,  even  if  it  con- 
sisted of  only  two  people,  the  house  should  appear  to  be 
crowded  to  suffocation.  This  proved  to  be  a  great  com- 
fort to  me  and  my  fellow-lecturers  and  readers.  Letters 
of  thanks  poured  in  upon  me  from  all  parts  of  the  civilized 
world,  Richmond  was  never  without  a  lecture  or  a  read- 
ing even  in  midsummer,  and  I  felt  that  I  had  done  a  good 
thing. 

So  excellent  was  the  screen  scheme  that  I  caused  similar 
lecture-halls  to  be  erected  in  all  the  cities,  towns,  and 
county  court-houses,  and  places  where  there  seemed  to  be 
any  apprehension  of  a  lecture  or  like  infliction.  These 
halls  were  built  mostly  for  the  benefit  of  Johnny  Reb* 
and  myself,  particularly  of  the  latter,  who  had  gradually 
played  himself  out  to  the  finest  dead-head  point.  By  not 
charging  anything  for  admission,  not  having  anything  to 
pay  for  rent,  lights,  or  fuel,  and  by  allowing  ourselves 
(out  of  a  fund  for  that  purpose)  fifty  cents  a  head  for  every 
fellow  who  could  be  induced  or  bullied  into  coming  in, 
Johnny  and  I,  and  others  managed  to  make  lecturing  pay 
fairly  well.  [I  remember  to  have  cleared  four  dollars  and 
a  half  on  one  occasion  in  the  village  of  Izzardville,  but 
that  great  success  was  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that  the 
lecture  was  for  a  charitable  or  religious  purpose.] 


f  Real  name  Farrar — Fernando  R.  Farrar— county  judge  of  the  period ; 
full  of  fun  as  Jim  Cowardin,  if  not  fuller;  played  well  on  fiddle;  Amelia 
man ;  good,  sharp,  smart  fellow,  in  short. 


76  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 


TENTH   INSTALLMENT. 

Cremation  of  Piano  Advertisers — Wisdom  of  Roman  Catholics — The 
Addie  Deane  House — University  of  Virginia — Judge  William  Robertson, 
Dr.  Maupin,  etc. — Editorial  Academy — Asylum  for  Worthless  Young 
Men — Parke  Park — Richmond  Boulevard — Matthews  &  Matthews — 
Life's  Appomattox — Semi-Phalansterian  Squares,  etc. 

[A  scrap  of  paper  which  was  overlooked  when  the  last 
installment  was  printed  contained  the  following  regulation 
in  regard  to  the  management  of  Burwell  Music  Hall.  It 
is  out  of  place  here,  but  ought  not  to  be  omitted. — Ed. 
Whig.] 

When  concert  troupes  insisted  upon  having  their  own 
pianos,  and  displaying  the  name  of  the  piano-maker  in 
large  letters,  as  (fitoickerittfl,  jftdttWtg,  gtoato,  etc.,  no 
opposition  whatever  was  made  or  even  meditated,  but  as 
soon  as  the  performer  had  hitched  up  his  stool,  adjusted 
his  coat-tail,  twiddled  his  preparatory  twiddle,  and  banged 
his  preliminary  bang,  a  tall  man  in  a  black  visor  walked 
quietly  out  from  behind  the  scenes  with  a  sledge-hammer, 
brained  the  performer,  smashed  the  piano,  threw  the 
pieces  out  of  the  window,  and  burnt  player  and  pieces  up 
together;  and  the  performance  went  on  without  further 
interruption. 

[What  these  people  will  do  when  they  get  to  a  world 
where  there  is  no  chance,  and  will  not  be  through  all 
eternity,  of  advertising  themselves  and  their  wares,  I  do 
not  know.  It  distresses  me,  but  I  don't  know,  and  am 
afraid  I  never  will  know.] 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  appearance  of  Rich- 
mond in  the  vicinity  of  the  Capitol  Square  was  pretty 
much  this:  a  dilapidated  Capitol,  bound  together  with 
grapevines  and  hoop-iron,  and  propped  by  long,  North 
Carolina  whitewashed  pine-trees.  But  on  the  three  squares 
extending  from  Ninth  to  Twelfth,  that  is  to  say  from  Bob 
ScammeH's  oyster  saloon  to  Judge  Crump's,  on  what  was 
once  called  Governor  Street,  was  first,  on  the  Valentine 
Square,  the  Virginia  Historical  Society  building,  a  noble 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


77 


structure ;  next,  on  the  City  Hall  Square,  Burwell  Music 
Hall,  a  superb  edifice  (far  finer,  architecturally,  than  any 
academy  of  music  in  the  country),  with  its  flexible  screen 
lecture-room  beneath  ;  and  third,  on  Ford's  Hotel  Square, 
the  massive  and  imposing,  though  not  beautiful,  circular 
walls  of  Brice  Church. 

The  environment  of  these  noble  buildings  was  not  in 
keeping — more  money,  of  course — more  money  every- 
where and  all  the  time.  And  yet  I  was  not  so  loath  to 
spend  as  you  might  suppose.  Old  Dodson,*  when  I  was 
sick  in  1872  at  the  Monumental  Hotel,  had  been  kind  to 
me  (indeed,  the  poor  man  had  no  better  sense  than  to  be 
kind  to  everybody),  and  accordingly  I  determined  to  do 
something  for  Dodson,  and  for  somebody  I  liked  even 
better  than  Dodson  ;  I  mean  myself.  Fact  is,  I  tried  to 
please  myself  generally,  almost  alwaysly ;  it  gave  me  much 
pleasure  to  please  myself. 

Not  to  digress  a  bit. 

The  Catholics  are  a  wise  people.  Their  priests  I  like 
prodigiously,  their  tenets  I  don't.  But  for  all  that,  they 
are  wise  enough,  I  tell  you;  i.e.,  when  they  have  got  a 
good  thing  they  know  it  just  about  as  well  as  you  or  any 
other  man  knows  it.  What  is  more,  they  find  out  the 
good  thing,  get  hold  of  it  and  keep  it,  long  before  you, 
with  your  weak,  Protestant  mind,  have  any  idea  of  it. 

Monumental  Hotel  Square  was  the  place  for  a  hotel — 
better^  much  better,  I  thought,  than  the  site  of  the  Shields 
House,  admirable  as  that  undoubtedly  was.  But  the 
Catholics  wouldn't  sell  their  church,  their  bishop's  house, 
or  the  Virginia  House — which  was  mean  of  them,  in  my 
humble  opinion.  So  I  did  the  best  I  could.  On  all  the 
space  I  could  purchase,  from  Grace  to  Broad,  including 
Blair' sf  drug  store  on  the  latter  street,  I  built  the  most 

*  Hotel-keeper  of  the  period ;  good-hearted  soul ;  fed  better  for  the 
money  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  and  had  twins  at  an  advanced 
time  of  life. 

f  Presbyterian  pill-maker  of  the  period ;  first  name  Hugh — honest, 
good  man.  Sensible  folk  loved  to  gather  in  his  back  shop) — Major  Smith, 
Dr.  Rawlings,  Colonel  Bell,  etc.,  and  a  practical  plumber  (did  you  ever 
see  or  hear  of  an  unpractical  plumber?)  named  O'Donnell.  Had  a 
spectacled  clerk  of  the  name  of  Nat.  Sheppard,  and  a  handsome  brother 
named  Jim  Blair. 

7* 


78  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

magnificent  granite  hotel,  ten  stories  high,  that  is  in  this 
world.  I  challenge  all  comparison.  A  minute  description 
of  the  house  will  be  found  in  the  twenty-fifth  thousand  of 
Graeme's*  Handbook  of  Richmond.  Outside  and  inside 
it  is  as  near  perfection  as  one  could  expect.  Some  of  its 
peculiar  features  will  be  given  in  my  forthcoming  work  on 
the  American  Hotel.  Dodson  has  been  keeping  it  for 
the  last  ten  years,  and  keeping  it  well,  although  people 
said  Dodson  couldn't  keep  a  house  as  big  as  that.  It  is  a 
superb  ornament  to  the  city,  and  makes  St.  Paul's  Church 
look  rather  small-potatoish.  I  doubt  if  there  is  on  the 
globe  a  pleasanter  home  for  the  traveler  than  Deane  f 
House. 

"Doctor" 

In  my  time  the  Southern  people  had  a  ridiculous  habit 
of  putting  a  handle  to  everybody's  name  —  clerks  were 
colonels  or  majors,  and  corn-cutters  professors.  This 
habit,  silly  as  it  was,  was  due,  I  think,  to  the  innate  hatred 
of  the  Southern  people  for  the  word  "Mister,"  which  is 
abominable,  in  spite  of  Mrs.  Browning's  effort  to  make  it 
otherwise.  Of  course  a  man  of  my  wealth  could  not  re- 
main a  plain  Mister,  and  inasmuch  as  an  academy  in  East 
Tennessee  had  conferred  upon  me  the  title  of  LL.D.  (in 
return  for  which  I  endowed  the  institution  with  a  postal 
order  for  ten  dollars),  I  was  generally  called  Doctor,  and 
got  to  feel  badly  if  everybody  didn't  call  me  Doctor. 

"Doctor,"  said  Judge  Robertson, t  "your  money  is 
going  fast.  Have  you  forgotten  the  University  of  Vir- 
ginia?" 

"Why,  Judge,  what  am  I  to  do?  The  whole  world 
wants  me  to  do  something  for  everything.  Here  is  John 
Tinsley  contending  that  I  ought  to  do  something  to  com- 
memorate Mann  Page,  Mont.  Miller,  Lyttleton  Tazewell, 
and  all  the  bright  fellows  that  boarded  at  Mrs.  Mosby's, 

*  A  tall.  Scottish  sort  of  gray-haired  Whig-QSux  person  of  the  period. 
Best  statistician  in  the  city  at  the  time. 

f  Named  for  Miss  Addie  Deane,  the  splendid  daughter  of  that  most 
excellent  man,  Dr.  Francis  D.  Deane.  The  hotel  belonged  to  her. 

J  Judge  William  of  that  name.  Had  the  finest  and  youngest  black 
eye  of  his  day.  In  general  I  don't  like  black,  but  I  literally  feed  on  a 
true  blue  eye  in  man  or  woman.  Judge  R.  married  the  belle  of  Virginia 
(she  deserved  to  be)  when  Virginia  was  Virginia. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


79 


corner  qf  Ninth  and  Franklin,  before  the  war;  my  Acad- 
emy for  Editors,  my  Asylum  for  Worthless  Young  Men, 
my  Cathedral,  my  Richmond  Park,  my  semi-Phalansterian 
Square,  etc.,  haven't  even  been  begun — just  put  yourself 
in  my  place,  Judge." 

"Well,  well,"  said  the  judge,  "I  give  up;  I  let  you 
off." 

"  Strikes  me,  Judge,  that  the  Miller  fund  ought  to  have 
gone  to  the  University." 

"  Too  late,  now;  too  late.  That's  long  past ;  we  look 
to  the  present  and  the  future — have  to  look  to  them." 

"Yes;  but  did  it  never  occur  to  you  that  if  the  people 
of  the  South  and  of  Virginia  really  did  want  to  build  up 
the  University  they  would  be  sure  to  find  a  way  ;  would 
go  earnestly  to  work  about  it,  as  Washington  and  Lee  has 
done,  and  that  if  they  do  not  ardently  desire  to  build  it 
up,  it  ought  not  to  be  built  up?" 

"Right  enough;  but  have  you  forgotten  Dr.  Maupin  ?" 

"  No,"  said  I  warmly,  "  and  never  will  or  can.  Neither 
have  I  forgotten  Stephen  Southall  (how  I  enjoyed  his  edi- 
torials in  the  Whig  in  Ridgway's  time  !),  nor  Prof.  Gilder- 
sleeve  (of  the  Bema),  nor  Prof.  Minor,  nor  any  of  them." 

The  allusion  to  Dr.  Maupin  overcame  me.  I  handed 
the  judge  a  check  for  half  a  million,  and  away  he  went. 

My  Academy  for  Editors  was  established  at  Stanards- 
ville,  in  the  county  of  Greene.  Its  main  object  was  to 
teach  editors  to  kneel  down  and  pray  for  some  sense, 
some  diminution  of  self-sufficiency,  some  ability  to  see 
both  sides  of  a  subject ;  in  a  word,  some  wisdom  from  on 
high,  before  they  wrote  their  editorials.  Particulars  will 
be  found  in  the  paper  marked  Z.  [No  such  paper  is  dis- 
cerned in  the  bundle  of  MSS. — Ed.  Whig.~\ 

My  Asylum  for  Wuthless  Yung  Menn  was  built  on  a 
beautiful  plot  of  ground  of  five  acres,  about  half-way  be- 
tween Richmond  and  Ashland.  Its  object  was  to  rescue 
society  from  the  Wuthless  Yung  Mann,  and  no  one  was 
sent  there  who  was  not  an  incurably  Wuthless*  Yung 


*  [Observe  the  value,  in  integers  of  contempt,  of  this  spelling.  Put  "  o" 
into  "  worth"  and  it  becomes  "  u"  inevitably,  but  the  terminal  consonants 
"  rt"  in  "  worth"  give  the  word  something  of  the  venomous  strength  of 


go  WHAT  I  DID   WITH. 

Mann — a  person  much  more  deserving  of  protection  and 
tender  isolation  from  the  vain  world  than  the  worthless- 
old  man.     (Particulars  will  be  found  in  the  paper  marked 
ZZ.)     [Greatly  to  our  regret,  this  paper  is  also  missing. 
—Ed.   Whig.-} 

A  suggestion  thrown  out  in  the  Dispatch  some  time  in 
1873  materially  modified  my  views  about  a  park  for  Rich- 
mond. My  first  idea  was  to  buy  ten  thousand  acres  of 
land  on  both  sides  of  the  river,  above  the  city,  and  to 
have  a  park  surpassing  Laura  Park  in  Lynchburg.  This 
was  done  in  part  only,  as  will  be  told. 

As  a  rule,  parks  are  built  on  this  or  that  side  of  a  city, 
accessible  enough  to  some,  but  out  of  the  reach  of  the 
bulk  of  the  population,  except  at  a  cost  either  of  time  or 
money,  or  both,  which  few,  if  any,  of  the  poorer  classes 
can  afford.  Why  not  have  a  park  accessible  to  every- 
body? This  was  that  great  work  which  my  agents,  Wil- 
liams &  Apperson  (Grubbs  having  retired  on  a  huge  for- 
tune), accomplished  for  me  within  six  months, — the  most 
signal  real-estate  triumph  ever  achieved. 

They  bought  for  me  a  strip  of  ground  varying  from  an 
eighth  to  a  quarter,  and  in  some  places  half  a  mile  in 
width,  and  extending  entirely  around  the  city,  including 
Manchester,  which  had  been  consolidated  with  Richmond. 
At  the  upper  end  of  the  city,  above  the  reservoir,  it 
swelled  out  into  a  park  proper,  presenting  in  bird's-eye 
view  the  appearance  of  an  irregular  ring  with  a  large  set 
on  the  southwestern  side.  A  good  broad  street  ran 
through  the  centre  of  the  ring,  and  at  suitable  intervals, 
not  too  close  together,  a  few  public  and  private  houses, 
with  gardens  attached,  were  allowed  to  be  built.  From 
the  Capitol  to  the  Boulevard,  as  it  was  called,  the  distance 
varied  from  a  mile  to  a  mile  and  a  half,  or  two  miles — the 
city  extending  a  goodly  distance  beyond  the  Boulevard. 
This  arrangement  secured  to  the  children  of  all  classes 
easy  access  at  any  time  to  fresh  air,  grass,  flowers,  trees, 
fountains,  birds,  squirrels,  deer  (these  last  protected  from 


the  serpent ;  whereas  the  "  th"  in  "  wuth"  impart  a  lisping  littleness  to  it. 
There  is  more  sense  in  bad  spelling  and  pronouncing  than  gerund-guiders 
dream  of. — Ed. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  ST 

dogs  by  reason  of  the  growing  common  sense  of  the  peo- 
•  ple,  who  ordered  all  dogs  not  properly  trained,  to  be  shot 
by  policemen),  and  a  thousand  other  pleasures  (aquaria 
here  and  there  and  the  like)  and  health-insurements  for 
the  little  people,  ay,  and  for  the  big  ones,  too. 

The  loss  of  so  much  good  building-ground  was  a  terrific 
blow  to  land-owners.  When  they  saw  the  city  progress- 
ing square  after  square  beyond  the  Boulevard,  and  re- 
membered the  comparatively  trifling  price  they  had  re- 
ceived for  their  property,  they  cursed  Apperson,  and 
Williams,  and  myself  till  we  would  have  been  black  in 
the  face  if  we  had  only  heard  them.  Suit  after  suit  was 
instituted  to  set  aside,  recover,  what  not.  No  use.  My 
agents  were  not  slouches  by  a  long  ways.  They  knew 
their  business.  The  infernal  gods  alone  know  the  amount 
of  litigation  that  ensued,  and  has  been  kept  up  to  this  day. 
My  attorneys,  Matthews  &  Matthews,*  who  have  been 
worked  nearly  to  death,  tell  me  they  see  no  end  to  the 
trouble.  As  it  doesn't  trouble  me,  and  gives  them  some 
fifty  thousand  dollars  each  a  year,  I  don't  care  how  long 
the  suits  continue. 

The  park  proper  is  called  Parkef  Park.  It  contains 
only  three  thousand  acres,  but  is  as  highly  and  beautifully 
ornamented  as  it  is  possible  for  landscape  gardening  to 
go.  With  the  islet-studded  river,  crossed  by  numbers  of 
elegant  bridges,  running  through  its  midst,  its  scenic 
surprises  at  almost  every  turn,  its  statues, \  its  bowers, 


*  The  elder  Matthews,  a  worthy  good  man,  married  the  only  daughter 
of  an  honest,  pious  old  New  School  Presbyterian  in  Lynchburg.  What 
was  the  old  gentleman's  name?  Surely  my  memory  is  not  failing  me? 
Anyhow,  that  old  gentleman  was  as  kind  to  me  as  if  he  had  been  my  own 
father — educated  me  to  be  a  missionary,  which  I  am.  For  his  daughter, 
an  estimable  woman  with  a  nose,  I  had  much  respect. 

f  So  called  in  honor  of  Miss  Parke  Chamberlayne,  a  friend  of  mine. 
She  married,  greatly  to  my  regret,  a  little  black  Bagby  of  the  period, 
after  which  I  ceased  to  take  much  interest  in  her.  But,  as  you  will  find 
out  when  you  wed,  women  never  marry  the  man  they  ought  to  have 
married.  I  retained  the  name,  though,  because  she  was  the  daughter  of 
that  true  gentleman  and  first-rate  physician,  Dr.  Lewis  W.  Chamber- 
layne. 

J  Prominent  among  them  were  two  bronze  groups  representing  Poca- 
hontas,  not  on  the  club  occasion,  but  on  some  other,  and  Captain  John 
Smith  quelling  insurrection;  designs  by  W.  P.  Palmer,  modeled  by 
D* 


82  WHAT  I  DTD   WITH 

kiosks,  conservatories,  etc.,  etc.,  many  think  it  equal  to 
Chatsworth,  and  very  much  superior  to  Laura  Park,  in' 
Lynchburg.  I  cannot  think  so.  The  little  mountains 
embraced  in  the  latter  park,  and  the  admirable  advantage 
taken  of  them  by  Jones,  who  made  every  inch  tell  in  art 
effects,  and,  above  all,  the  magnificent  views  obtainable 
from  the  mountain  roadways  and  towers,  make  it,  in  my 
candid  estimation,  superior  to  any  park  in  this  country 
or  in  Europe.  Both  are  good  enough  and  beautiful 
enough,  in  all  conscience.  Their  relative  merits  afford 
a  subject  of  continued  amicable  quarrels  between  the 
Lynchburg  and  Richmond  papers. 

Life,  as  it  is  known  to  most  of  us,  is  like  the  upper 
part  of  the  Appomattox  River, — a  narrow  stream,  muddy 
more  than  half  the  time,  full  of  snags,  hammocks,  and 
sand-bars,  with  only  here  and  there  a  good  fishing-hole. 
When  the  boys  come  back  from  the  academic  and  col- 
legiate ridges,  provided,  as  they  and  their  fond,  foolish 
parents  (who,  being  in  business,  ought  to  have  more 
sense)  fancy,  with  the  best  tackle  in  the  world,  they  find 
Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  who  have  been  raised  to  the 
work  on  the  spot,  and  never  quitted  it,  already  squatted 
down  by  the  holes,  with  the  plainest  poles,  and  the 
meanest-looking  cymlins,  and  the  merest  fish,  and  with 
no  more  idea  of  quitting  "them  holes"  in  favor  of  the 
college  boys  till  death  do  them  dislodge,  than  they  have 
of  going  to  heaven  to  cook  the  fish  or  spend  the  money 
they  acquire  in  this  earthly  vale.  [By  the  way,  I  wish  I 
had  told  Judge  Robertson  that  one  good  primary  school, 
based  upon  a  proper  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  the 
human  mind,  and  in  which  the  knowledge  that  is  of  most 
immediate  use  to  most  people  (there  was  not  such  a 
school,  nay,  not  the  approach  to  it,  in  Virginia  in  my 
time)  should  alone  be  taught,  would,  in  my  judgment, 
outweigh  all  the  universities  on  earth.  How  many 
parents  know  and  feel  restive  under  this,  and  yet  sit 
quiet !  Poor  parents !  But,  after  all,  the  practical 


Valentine,  and  executed  in  Germany, — a  tardy  recognition,  so  far  as  Smith 
is  concerned,  on  the  part  of  Virginia  of  the  greatest  of  all  Virginians, 
Washington,  Lee,  and  Jackson,  not  excepted. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  83 

school  of  the  shop,  the  factory,  the  store,  the  printing- 
office,  etc.,  is  and  must  long  remain  the  best  school. 
How  to  make  money  honorably  and  to  save  it,  in  other 
words,  how  to  support  yourself  and  family,  that  is  the 
best,  the  indispensable  education  (for  how  can  you  and 
family  so  much  as  live  if  you  do  not  acquire  a  knowledge 
of  self-maintenance?),  to  which  even  reading  and  writing 
are  secondary.] 

A  consequence  of  this  false  system  of  education  is  that 
as  civilization  advances  there  is  a  continuous  increase  of 
educated  men  and  women  with  refined  tastes  who  do  not 
know  how  to  get  along,  or,  if  they  do,  find  all  the  fishing- 
holes  in  life's  Appomattox  full, — Rob  and  Tom  having 
learned  how  to  make  money  while  Edward  and  Fitzhugh 
were  grubbing  up  Greek  roots.  This  being  the  case,  the 
educated  men  and  women  sink  into  clerkships  and  second- 
ary places,  with  salaries  of  from  five  hundred  to  two 
thousand  dollars — there  being  a  limit  and  a  decennially 
lessening  limit  to  the  relative  numbers  of  doctors,  lawyers, 
and  preachers.  No  provision  is  made  for  these  clerks 
and  minus  quantities  in  the  sum  of  social  life.  They  ought 
to  be  content  to  live  as  cheaply  as  mechanics  who  earn 
double  their  salary,  but  they  are  not.  They  cannot  be ; 
the  education  which  ought  never  to  have  been  given  to 
nine-tenths  of  them  has  unfitted  them  for  cheap  living. 
Little  builders,  grog-shop  and  corner-grocery  sharks, 
whose  greed  for  money  is  ravenous  and  cruel  as  the 
grave,  build  for  the  multitude  who  are  content  to  live 
anyhow,  and  the  big  builders  build  for  the  rich  mer- 
chants, eminent  doctors,  great  lawyers,  and  fashionable 
preachers.  The  educated,  cultivated  incapable  no  human 
being  considers. 

I,  being  better  than  a  human  being,  and  having  no  de- 
sire to  "git  my  rent,"  did  consider  him,  and  built  in  the 
upper  part  of  the  city  a  dozen  or  two  squares  of  houses 
for  him  and  his  kind.  They  were  built  with  every  con- 
ceivable labor-saving  convenience,  required  little  fuel  to 
heat  them,  were  inexpensively  lighted,  and  needed  scarcely 
any  furniture, — wardrobes,  bureaus,  presses,  etc.,  being 
in  the  very  structure  of  the  houses  themselves.  (I  was 
sick  unto  death  of  seeing  my  wife's  thirty-feet  dray  run- 


84  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

ning  like  mad  from  end  to  end  of  the  city.)  The  rent 
for  each  house  covered  the  taxes  (they  were  high — taxes 
are  always  high)  and  repaired  the  annual  wear  and  tear — 
that  was  all.  Mr.  R.  D.  Ward*  attended  faithfully  to 
this  business  for  me.  The  houses  were  not  crammed 
down  upon  the  ground  as  close  as  they  could  set,  but 
were  separated  by  a  space  of  twelve  to  fifteen  feet,  and 
in  the  middle  of  each  side  of  each  square  was  a  house 
built  expressly  for  the  accommodation  of  young  men  and 
bachelors, — my  object  being  to  give  them  better  quarters 
than  they  got  in  the  down-town  dens,  and  to  have  them 
so  close  to  the  neighboring  families  as  to  offer  them  every 
incentive  to  visit  tne  ladies,  brighten  up  the  evening  (so 
often  so  dull  for  the  want  of  young  company),  fall  in  love 
with  the  girls,  marry  early,  help  the  minus-quantity 
fathers,  and  so  help  society  onward.  I  also  encouraged 
many  polished  gentlemen  to  remain  bachelors,  but  at  the 
same  time  to  be  true  to  their  social  duties,  and  to  make 
themselves  (what  they  can  do,  and  the  worn -down  hus- 
bands, too  often  cannot)  the  very  life  and  charm  of  the 
households  that  are  happy  enough  to  call  them  friends. 

I  doubt  if  I  ever  did  a  better  or  a  wiser  thing  than  the 
building  of  these  same  squares.  They  were  not  all 
lumped  together  in  a  single  district  of  the  city,  but  were 
interspersed  among  other  squares,  and  gave  to  the  to\vn 
a  tone  which  otherwise  it  could  never  have  had.  The 
houses  were  eagerly  rented  by  clerks,  accountants,  editors, 
and  insurance  agents,  and  the  rooms  in  the  bachelors' 
homes  were  just  as  eagerly  sought  by  unmarried  men. 
To  be  sure  there  were  certain  young  men  who  preferred 
to  remain  down-town,  as  near  as  possible  to  their  beloved 
bar-rooms  and  bagnios,  but  this  could  not  be  helped. 
No  one,  not  even  their  own  mothers,  could  wish  such 
beasts  turned  loose  in  a  decent  man's  family.  A  snug 

*  Noble,  red-haired  tipstaff  of  the  time,  who,  for  ninety  years  or  more, 
carried  a  vestal  fire  upon  his  worthy  head.  Richmond  gas  being  bad, 
this  invaluable  man  did  yeoman  service  by  lighting  people  home  from 
balls,  parties,  and  the  like.  To  avert  a  glare  he  wore  a  ground-glass  hat 
that  came  well  down  over  his  brows  and  around  the  back  of  his  neck, 
and  if  the  eyes  of  his  customers  still  pained  them  he  reversed  the  ordi- 
nary process,  and  diminished  the  illumination  by  trimming  the  wick — 
that  is,  by  cutting  his  hair. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  85 

wing-room  in  each  of  the  bachelor's  homesvwas  set  apart 
for  the  matron,  a  sort  of  concierge  who  kept  the  house  in 
order  and  attended  to  the  sewing  of  the  young  men,  or 
matron ized  the  young  ladies  of  the  vicinity  whenever  the 
former  gave  a  party,  dancing  or  other,  to  the  latter. 
From  time  to  time  some  one  or  other  of  these  old  widows 
or  maids  destroyed  the  peace  of  mind  of  some  of  their 
old  bachelor  tenants,  an  infliction  which,  however  de- 
served, would  soon  have  driven  the  bachelors  away  but 
for  the  timely  interference  of  the  married  ladies  of  the 
neighborhood.  After  all,  things  regulated  themselves 
pretty  well,  without  the  aid  of  police.  A  great  point 
was  gained  in  giving  numerous  old  ladies  the  occupation 
they  most  delight  in — keeping  house,  their  own  house,  as 
it  were,  and  in  ministering  exclusively  to  male  tenants ; 
and  another  great  point  was  the  putting  of  bachelors  old 
and  young  in  close  proximity  to  the  ladies.  You  may 
love  all  the  ladies  in  the  world  with  the  maddest  devo- 
tion, but  if  they  live  so  far  away  from  you  that  you  can 
never  lay  eyes  on  them  or  have  their  pretty  palms  in 
yours,  the  chances  are  that  you  will  marry  very  few  of 
them  at  one  time.  Proximity  is  the  great  thing;  -it  is 
next  to  certainty  in  matters  of  the  matrimonial  kind.  I 
forgot  to  say  that  little  by  little  the  bachelors  learned 
that  nothing  sweetened  and  enlivened  their  parties  half 
so  much  as  a  fine  sprinkling  of  married  ladies.  Occa- 
sionally the  bachelors  took  breakfast  and  tea  at  home,  but 
they  were  so  often  invited  out  to  these  meals  that  the 
matrons  seldom  had  the  opportunity  of  turning  an  addi- 
tional honest  penny  by  feeding  them, — which  made  them 
indignant  quite  frequently.  Women  past  the  marrying 
point,  and  without  daughters  or  female  pets  of  their  own, 
soon  take  a  proprietary  interest  in  their  masculine  tenants, 
and  object  to  their  marrying  anybody.  It  is  hard,  but  I 
have  found  that  there  is  no  way  of  making  everybody 
happy  all  the  time, — not  even  old  bachelors,  old  widows, 
or  old  maids.* 


*  No  mention  is  made  of  widowers  in  connection  with  the  bachelors' 
homes,  because  they  flit  into  marriage  so  quickly  that  you  can't  count 
them.  They  are  evanescenses,  ghosts  of  a  transitory  and  incomputable 
condition. 


86  WHAT  I  DID    WITH 

Auxiliary  to  the  family  squares  were  the  semi-phalan- 
sterian  squares,  based  upon  Chas.  Fourier's  excellent  but 
excessively-carried-out  idea,  and  designed  to  rescue  decent 
people  from  the  fangs  of  ruthless  cooks,  maids,  and  other 
domestic  servants,  black  or  white,  who  had  long  ruled  the 
roast  in  a  savagely  tyrannical  manner.  They  were  built 
precisely  like  the  family  square,  the  houses  twelve  to  thir- 
teen feet  apart,  with  a  bachelor's  home  in  the  middle  of 
each  side  of  the  square,  only  the  lots  were  not  so  deep, 
leaving  a  large  quadrangle  in  the  centre  of  the  square,  on 
which  was  erected  a  large  building  containing  all  the 
appliances  for  cooking,  washing,  ironing,  etc.,  for  all  the 
families  residing  in  that  square ;  also  servants'  rooms  in 
abundance.  Except  in  case  of  sickness,  or  when  there 
were  very  young  children,  servants  were  wholly  dispensed 
with ;  kitchens  and  laundries  were  unknown  ;  marketing 
was  unknown,  groceries  even  were  supplied  by  the  man 
in  charge  of  the  central  hall,  who,  getting  things  by 
wholesale,  and  having  but  one  fire  to  keep  up,  fed  his 
customers  more  cheaply  than  they  could  have  fed  them- 
selves, hired  servants  and  furnished  them  just  when  they 
were  needed  and  no  longer,  and  in  fine  carried  out  the 
idea  of  the  Fourierite  phalanstery  in  such  a  way  that  the 
families  who  patronized  him  were  enabled  to  live  hotel- 
fashion  in  their  private  houses — an  admirable  good  thing, 
I  promise  you.  I  built  twelve  dozen  of  these  squares  in 
various  parts  of  Richmond,  and  now  the  Semi-Phalanstery 
is  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  in  all  the  great  cities 
of  Christendom,  and  in  many  small  ones  also. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  gy 


ELEVENTH    INSTALLMENT. 

Black  Crook  Club  Monument  —  Dr.  Leigh  Burton — Nat.  Sturdivant 
Terrace — Hermann  Garden  —  Louis  Euker  —  Cornelia  Cathedral — 
Worship  Purely  Musical — Leo  Wheat — Major  Burr  Noland — Diseased 
Germans — Midnight  New  Year  Services — Our  Saviour — Mary  David- 
son—General Mahone — Elder,  Fisher,  and  Sheppard — G.  Watson 
James,  etc. 

IN  order  to  quiet  the  public  mind  and  to  relieve  the 
city  from  a  task  too  onerous  for  its  weak  exchequer,  I 
swept  away  all  the  houses  from  Gamble's  Hill  and  con- 
verted it  into  one  of  the  prettiest  little  terraced  parks 
imaginable.  Near  the  centre  of  the  grounds,  a  little  to 
the  west  of  the  former  site  of  Pratt' s  Castle,  and  on  the 
highest  point  of  the  hill,  arose  an  immense  monument  to 
the  Black  Crook  Club :  Jonah  White,  in  the  costume  of  a 
Roman  Senator,  on  top,  and  beneath  and  around  him  all 
the  members  of  the  club,  life-size  and  accurate  likenesses 
every  one,  grouped  together,  hand  in  hand,  with  their 
mouths  wide  open  and  singing  at  the  full  pitch  of  their 
voices, — 

"  We  will  do  thee  no  harm, 
We  will  do  thee  no  harm  ; 
Says  the  rag  man 
To  the  bag  man, 
We  will  do  thee  no  harm." 

At  a  little  distance  from  the  main  group  (the  figures 
were  carefully  cast  of  hematite  iron  at  Tanner's  foundry) 
stood  my  friend  Dr.  W.  Leigh  Burton,*  attired  as  Or- 
pheus, with  a  fiddle  in  one  hand  and  a  forceps  in  the 
other,  leading  the  chorus.  The  little  park,  known  as  Nat. 
Sturdivant  Terrace,  was  a  great  place  of  resort  for  strangers 
and  for  nurses  with  babies  in  baby-carriages.  Strangers 
always  burst  into  roars  of  laughter,  and  complained  that 
looking  at  the  monument  made  them  thirsty. 

*  Skillful  dentist  of  the  day  and  date.  Could  pull  any  named  tooth  in 
a  circular  saw  while  in  full  buzz.  Handy  man  on  elephants  and  sharks. 


88  WHAT  I  DID    WITH 

This  reminds  me  of  a  fact  which  I  had  entirely  over- 
looked, viz.,  the  completion  of  the  Hermann  Garden  by 
Louis  Euker*  and  myse'f  simultaneously  with  the  com- 
pletion of  the  Shields  House.  The  square  between  Seventh 
and  Eighth  on  Broad  was  equally  divided  between  the 
hotel  and  the  garden.  The  latter  was  beautifully  laid  out, 
the  fine  holly-tree  on  Dr.  Trent's  lot  being  religiously 
preserved,  other  trees,  shrubs,  vines,  etc.,  being  added, 
together  with  two  fountains  as  graceful  in  design  as  any  I 
ever  saw;  indeed,  the  whole  place  was  made  as  attractive 
as  possible.  My  object  in  establishing  the  garden  was  to 
prepare  the  way  for  that  excellent  European  custom  of 
associating  the  sexes  in  all  enjoyments  whatsoever,  even 
in  conviviality.  Why  male  human  animals  cannot  get 
^long  without  drinking  I  simply  do  not  know,  but  the 
majority  of  them  either  cannot  or  will  not ;  at  all  events 
they  do  not,  and  the  only  method  yet  discovered  of  ton- 
ing them  down,  of  stopping  them  from 'swill ing,  boozing, 
and  guzzling  to  excess  is  to  associate  the  female  animal 
with  them,  so  that  even  in  their  cups  her  benign  influ- 
ence is  exerted  over  them.  "But  this  lowers  the  female 
animal."  I  don't  know  about  that.  In  Holland,  Germany, 
France,  and  Italy  the  plan  seems  to  have  worked  well, 
made  races  eminently  temperate  and  healthy  as  compared 
with  the  English  and  American,  and  substituted  mild  for 
strong  drinks — the  entering  wedge  to  no  drinks  at  all,  if 
that  time  is  ever  to  come.  I  am  told  that  the  plan  suc- 
ceeded so  well  at  Hermann  Garden  that  in  the  course  of 
a  few  years  cold  tea  in  summer  and  hot  coffee  in  the 
winter  became  the  favorite  drinks.  "But  surely  the  ladies 
did  not  go  there  in  winter?"  Yes,  they  did.  By  a  sim- 
ple arrangement  of  iron  columns,  ribs,  etc.,  which  could 
be  quickly  put  up  and  taken  down,  Louis  converted  his 
garden  about  the  first  of  December  into  a  crystal  palace, 
more  attractive  in  some  respects  than  it  had  been  during 
the  summer. 


*  Gentlemanly  beer  man  of  the  period.  Can't  say  that  he  was  a  better 
fellow  than  Otto  Morgenstern  or  old  man  Manly,  but  the  land  was  con- 
venient to  his  establishment,  and  that  was  why  I  helped  him  and  not  the 
others. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  89 

No  sooner  had  I  announced  my  intention  of  building 
my  Cathedral  on  the  southeast  corner  of  Fifth  and  Main 
Streets,  than  there  was  a  general  outcry, — 

"Why,  man,  you  might  as  well  build  the  house  down 
at  Rocketts;  if  you  want  a  really  appropriate  site  for  it, 
Union  Hill  is  the  place;  that's  where  the  city  ought  to 
have  been  built  originally,  anyway,  and  would  have  been 
built  but  for  the  folly  of  some  old  curmudgeon  or  other, 
whose  name  has  gone  into  merited  oblivion.  Don't  you 
see  that  the  city  has  extended  already  a  mile  beyond  Mon- 
roe Park?  There's  no  telling  where  it  will  go  in  that 
direction.  Come,  reconsider  the  matter." 

"Too  late,  my  friends;  the  purchase  money  has  been 
paid,  the  deed  signed  and  delivered.  Besides,  I  know 
what  I'm  about." 

There  is  no  more  perfect  specimen  of  Gothic  architect- 
ure on  earth  than  Cornelia*  Cathedral.  Interior  and  ex- 
terior alike  are  as  near  perfection  as  it  is  in  the  power  of 
human  hands  to  make  a  house  for  the  worship  of  God. 
It  is  large  enough,  but  not  too  large;  it  is  dim  enough, 
without  being  too  dim;  the  elevation  of  nave  and  transept 
lifts  the  soul,  but  does  not  crush  it  into  insignificance,  as 
in  St.  Peter's,  and  there  is  about  the  inner  atmosphere  a 
hush  and  a  charm  peculiar  to  this  house.  At  least  I  fancy 
so.  There  is  no  pulpit,  nor  will  there  ever  be  one.  No 
voice  of  preacher  or  of  public  prayer  will  ever  be  heard 
there.  The  service  is  wholly  musical — an  organ  of  great 
power  and  sweetness,  and  a  choir  trained  thoroughly  to 
render  devotional  music  in  a  manner  truly  and  unaffect- 
edly devotional.  As  a  rule,  the  organ  is  the  only  instru- 
ment used,  but  at  fit  times  and  seasons  every  instrument 
that  can  increase  and  intensify  religious  emotion  is  intro- 
duced. The  choir  of  men,  women  and  boys,  is  paid  by 
the  year,  and  sufficiently  well  paid  to  devote  their  whole 
time  to  the  service  of  the  Cathedral.  There  are  three 
services  daily,  an  hour  each  in  length,  at  morning,  noon, 
and  evening, — the  matins,  nones,  and  vespers  of  the 


*  Frances  Cornelia  Chaplin — the  first,  sweetest,  dearest  friend  I  had  on 
earth. 

8* 


9o 


WHAT  I  DID   WITH 


Catholics*  a  little  altered.  In  the  summer  the  matin  ser- 
vice occurs  while  it  is  yet  cool,  but  in  winter  not  until  ten 
o'clock,  after  people  have  had  their  breakfasts.  Worship, 
on  an  empty  stomach  does  not  suit  civilization  and  dys- 
pepsia. Nones  in  winter  are  at  three  P.M.,  as  the  bulk  of 
the  better  classes  (six  o'clock  dinners  are  still  the  excep- 
tion in  Richmond)  are  on  their  way  to  dine,  and  vespers 
at  eight  or  half-past  eight,  after  tea  has  been  comfortably 
taken. 

The  backs  of  the  pews  are  very  high — no  temptation  to 
peep  at  bonnets  and  pretty  faces  being  possible — and  most 
of  them  are  provided  with  keys,'  so  that  the  worshiper 
may  lock  himself  in.  All  the  pews  for  one  person,  of 
which  there  are  a  great  number,  are  under  lock  and  key. 
The  organ-loft  at  the  rear  of  the  church,  where  the  pulpit 
usually  is,  may  be  looked  into,  but  a  screen  of  bronze 
open-work  hides  organistf  and  choir  from  the  public 
gaze.  Absolute  silence  is  demanded  of  every  one  who 
enters,  and  is  rigidly  enforced.  Locked  in  his  pew,  the 
worshiper  listens  and  adores.  His  soul  goes  to  heaven 
on  the  wings  of  music.  Doctrine,  dogma,  creed  of  any 
kind,  vain  babbling  of  always  fallible  interpretations  of  the 
Uninterpretable,  of  Him  whose  ways  are  past  finding  out, 
there  is  none  to  disturb  him.  "My  son,  give  me  thine 
heart."  And  his  heart  cries  out,  and  up,  and  on  to  his 
Father,  "I  know  not  what  to  believe — I  do  not  believe — 
I  love.  Slay  me  if  Thou  wilt  for  my  want  of  faith,  but 
this  love,  this  joy  beyond  all  words,  all  thoughts,  shall 
lift  me  into  life  again.  I  adore  so  much  I  cannot  fear!" 
And  if  with  streaming  eyes  and  bent  knees  he  wishes  to 
give  way  to  his  emotion,  and  to  stretch  appealing  hands 
to  Him  that  heareth  prayer, — he  is  alone  in  his  locked 
pew,  let  him  do  what  he  will. 

*  The  Roman  Catholics  are  very  wise.  I  do  not  wonder  that  in  Europe 
they  reconquered  so  much  that  Protestantism  once  owned,  and  that,  under 
the  guise  of  Ritualism,  they  are  gaining  ground  so  rapidly  in  England  and 
America.  Their  rites  and  services  are  based  not  merely  upon  human  but 
upon  universal  nature.  Birds  have  not  only  their  matins  and  vespers, 
but  their  mid-da?  sen-ice  as  well.  At  noon,  or  a  little  thereafter,  the  deep 
stillness  of  the  forest  is  broken  by  a  choral  service,  brief  but  intensely 
sweet  and  mournful. 

f  Mr.  Leo  P.  Wheat,  a'man  of  genius  and  a  master  of  his  instrument. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  91 

Tell  me  nothing  about  the  debilitations  of  music.  I 
know  its  power  and  I  know  its  perversions.  But,  my 
good  friend,  subtract  from  religious  exercises  the  element 
of  music,  and  what  have  you  left?  Only  the  intellect, 
argument,  reason  for- the  faith,  etc.  Ah!  that  is  what 
those  wretched  scientists  demand,  and  little  else  but  that. 

One  stern  exaction  was  enforced  upon  the  organist  and 
every  member  of  the  choir,  viz.,  that  under  no  circum- 
stances whatever  should  there  be  the  least  approach  to 
trapeze-work,  ground  and  lofty  tumbling  upon  the  key- 
boards, wild  hullaballooing  and  cattle-stampeding  along 
the  octaves,  alternations  of  peacock-screamings  and  sick- 
kitten  sorrowings,  pounding  the  chords  in  the  mortar  of 
self-conceit  and  fancying  it  inspiration — in  a  word,  no 
showing  off,  no  exhibition  of  purely  personal  skill  in  in- 
strumentation or  vocalization.  Immediate  and  hopeless 
loss  of  situation  followed  every  violation  of  this  rule.  To 
present  the  compositions  really  worthy  to  be  called  sacred 
of  the  best  German*  masters,  and  of  the  earlier  and  in 
some  respects  still  better  Italian  school  (Palestrina  and 
Allegri,  for  example),  when  profound  faith  and  profound 
feeling  went  hand  in  hand,  and  to  present  them  in  the 
spirit  as  nearly  as  possible  in  which  they  were  first  de- 
livered by  the  inspired  composers,  that  was  the  duty  of 
the  choir,  and  that  was  their  whole  duty.  Nor  were  the 
hymns  and  psalms  to  which  the  mass  of  hea'rers  had  been 
accustomed  from  childhood  by  any  means  neglected.  A 
standing  reward  of  five  thousand  dollars  for  a  first-rate 
devotional  composition  failed,  after  ten  years'  trial,  to 
produce  anything  worthy  of  the  name,  the  committee 
withholding  the  reward  all  that  time,  after  which  it  was 
withdrawn.  I  suppose  the  scientific  spirit  had  killed  the 
sacred  spirit  [Some  contradiction  here  of  views  before 
given.  But  between  diction  and  contradiction  somewhere 
lies  the  truth  most  likely],  or  else  that  mankind  in  gen- 
eral, out-evolving  the  musicians,  got  so  far  ahead  that  the 


*  I  like  these  Germans.  They  are  a  fearfully  diseased  people,  hut 
still  I  like  them.  Their  disease  is  an  incurable  honesty.  Now,  there  is 
Mr.  Lisfeldt.  I  regard  Mr.  Lisfeldt  as  the  best  man  in  the  world,  except 
Maj.  Burr  P.  Noland. 


92  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

latter  could  never  catch  up,  so  that  even  the  "  music  of 
the  future"  failed  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  the  people  of 
the  present,  who  thereupon  fell  back  perforce  upon  the 
good  old  music  of  the  past. 

-  At  first  there  was  a  large  attendance  of  the  curious; 
afterwards  the  excellence  of  the  music  drew  crowds  of 
women  and  children,  and  music-lovers  of  the  male  sex; 
but  by  degrees  the  men  of  business  who  contemned  Cor- 
nelia Cathedral  and  the  mode  of  its  worship,  dropped  in 
on  their  way  to  or  from  their  offices  and  shops  to  rest 
awhile,  and  "just  to  look,  you  know."  It  was  so  cool 
within  the  thick  stone  walls  in  summer  and  so  comfortable 
in  winter.  Then  the  high  vaulted  roof — yes,  the  whole 
interior  was  so  beautiful,  and  the  solemn  stillness  so  re- 
freshing after  the  bustle  and  worry  of  work,  after  the 
dirty,  soul-dirtying  work  of  making  money.  And  ere 
long  these  men  of  business  contrived  to  get  to  the  Cathe- 
dral in  time  to  hear  a  little  music.  Bashful  enough  in  the 
beginning,  ashamed  indeed  to  be  caught,  they  slipped  in 
slyly;  but  a  year  had  not  passed  before  they  went  in 
boldly,  in  couples  often,  and  in  groups.  They  found  it 
to  be  a  good  thing  to  go  down-town  with  some  motet, 
fugue,  or  anthem  warming  their  hearts,  or  to  return  home 
after  a  voiceless  prayer  in  the  Cathedral. 

My  point  was  gained.  My  object  in  building  so  low 
down  in  the  city  and  so  close  to  its  business  haunts  was 
fully  explained,  and,  in  the  eyes  of  all  but  the  bigots,  jus- 
tified. 

The  Cathedral  was  never  closed  day  or  night  the  whole 
year  round.  It  was  not  a  refuge,  though,  for  vagrants 
and  tramps,  or  for  fashionable  loungers  of  either  sex. 
The  tramps  were  kindly  turned  away  to  some  place  where 
needed  assistance  could  be  had ;  the  fops  and  their  giggling 
females  were  simply  not  admitted  at  all.  The  organist 
and  his  best  pupils  were  permitted  to  play  whenever  the 
spirit  moved  them — a  privilege  seldom  abused,  but  much 
coveted  by  the  more  gifted  and  spiritual  scholars,  who 
desired  to  breathe  out  their  deepest  and  most  devout 
thoughts;  and  so  it  often  happened  that  business  and 
professional  men  and  strangers,  dropping  in  at  odd  hours, 
heard  the  best  music.  Far  into  the  night,  sometimes,  the 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  93 

belated  worker  or  the  reveler,  passing  the  Cathedral  and 
feeling  the  pavement  trembling  under  his  feet,  would  go 
in  and  have  his  heart  lifted  unto  God  by  the  mighty  organ, 
touched  by  the  hand  of  one  who  could  not  find  sleep  until 
his  inspired  thought  had  found  expression.  The  vergers 
and  watchmen  told  me  that  the  men  who  came  in  most 
frequently  late  at  night  and  who  appeared  to  be  most 
moved  to  penitence,  were  journalists  and  artists  recover- 
ing from  some  bout  at  drinking.  The  overwhelming  ef- 
fect of  the  music  upon  their  sin-stricken  souls,  when  they 
thought  no  one  observed  them,  was  said  to  be  affecting  in 
the  extreme.  That  a  thorough  reformation  from  their 
unfortunate  habits  was  ever  accomplished  may  be  doubted, 
because  the  outward  intoxication  by  which  they  occa- 
sionally disgrace  themselves  is  but  the  reflex  of  that  in- 
ward intoxication,  more  or  less  habitual  Avith  men  of  their 
temperament,  which  has  in  it  something  almost  divine. 
I  have  been  told,  moreover,  that  drinking  men  never  get 
really  penitent  until  they  get  sick  of  liquor,  that  what  ap- 
pears to  be  remorse  is  only  nausea,  and  that  penitence 
darts  away  as  soon  as  the  tone  'of  the  stomach  and  nerves 
is  restored.  I  don't  think  this  is  altogether  true;  on  the 
contrary,  I  think  somewhat  of  the  penitence  lingers  and 
abides,  is  remembered  in  the  soberest  intervals,  provokes  a 
shudder  of  horror  at  past  sin,  and  many  a  heartfelt  prayer 
against  a  relapse.  For  all  that,  I  can  readily  believe  that 
a  man  with  an  absolutely  gin-proof  stomach  might  keep 
on  a  continuous  spree  during  the  whole  of  his  lifetime. 

The  midnight  services  on  the  days  set  apart  for  the  cele- 
bration of  the  birth  of  our  Saviour*  and  the  incoming  of 

*  Our  Saviour?  Yes,  a  thousand  times  yes.  The  most  besotted  skeptic 
and  scientist  who  counts  his  unbelief  as  righteousness  (which  it  might  be, 
but  not  too  often  is)  must  admit  that  millions  have  been  saved  in  this  life 
by  faith  in  the  Nazarene — and  if  in  this  life,  in  the  next  as  well,  we  may 
be  sure.  Nevertheless,  let  me  say  boldly  that  I  have  a  good  deal  of  hope 
for  honest  unbelievers.  Hell,  I  take  it,  is  a  sparsely-settled  country — 
much  like  that  between  Richmond  and  Tappahannock,  or  between 
Barksdale  depot  and  Milton,  N.  C.,  in  1874.  Here  and  there  will  be 
found  a  worldly-minded  preacher  sitting  apart  on  a  tussock  of  broom- 
straw,  feeling  a  little  chilly  and  lonesome,  thinking  himself  an  ill-used 
person,  and  wondering  where  the  devil  Darwin  is.  But  the  bulk  of  the 
inhabitants  is  made  up  of  ingrained  hypocrites,  sellers  of  mean  liquor, 
and  the  beaters  of  wives  and  other  dumb  beasts. 


94 


WHAT  I  DID   IVITH 


the  New  Year  were  as  sublime  as  the  art  at  my  command 
enabled  me  to  make  them.  If  I  should  say  that  the  crush 
on  these  occasions  equaled  that  at  St.  Peter's  when  the 
Miserere  is  sung  during  Holy  Week,  I  would  be  accused 
of  exaggeration;  therefore  I  will  simply  say  that  it' was 
very  great,  and  that  many  persons  came  from  distant 
States,  and  some  from  over  the  sea,  to  enjoy  the  music. 
I  do  wish  that  I  knew  thorough  bass  from  counterpoint, 
etc.,  sufficiently  well  to  enable  me  to  describe  the  soul- 
moving  harmonies  of  the  great  composers  as  rendered  by 
the  Cornelia  Cathedral  choir.  [I  had  laid  away  a  news- 
paper scrap,  in  which  the  description  is  finely  and  techni- 
cally done  by  a  critic  of  the  highest  order,  a  Jewish  gen- 
tleman of  Hamburg  as  I  was  told ;  but  like  many  other 
things  it  is  laid  away  so  carefully  that  it  might  as  well 
have  been  laid  in  the  grave.  If  any  one  finds  it  after  I 
am  gone  he  will  do  me  a  great  favor  by  inserting  it  just 
here.  If  not  found  the  reader  must  trust  to  his  imagina- 
tion, or  better  still  go  to  the  Cathedral  and  hear  for  him- 
self.] 

In  '98  or  thereabouts,  my  granddaughter,  Mary  David- 
son, was  born,  in  the  county  of  Rockbridge,  and  in  her 
eighteenth  year  appeared  as  the  leading  soprano  singer  in 
our  choir.  She  was  as  beautitul  a  woman  as  ever  lived, 
fair,  blue-eyed  and  golden-haired,  as  pure  as  light  itself, 
and  sweet  as  charity.  A  Sabbath  peace  and  sanctity 
("the  Sabbaths  of  eternity,  one  Sabbath  deep  and  wide") 
seemed  to  have  passed  into  her  being  at  birth,  and  her 
whole  life  was  in  accord  with  that  holiness.  No  nun  was 
ever  more  devoutly  or  wholly  religious.  Her  piety  an.d  her 
existence  were  one.  God  was  with  her,  in  her,  and  about 
her  ever;  she  was  in  this  world  and  above  it  in  some 
supernatural  way,  of  which  every  one  who  saw  her  became 
instantly  conscious.  Her  voice  was  literally  the  voice  of 
a  seraph — clear  and  sweet,  but  infinitely  more  than  that 
— so  thrilling  and  penetrating  that  all  who  heard  it  were  at 
once  awed  as  by  a  sound  coming  immediately  from  the 
heavens.  She  sang  sacred  music  as  it  ought  to  be  sung. 
She  gave  all  its  meaning,  all  its  power,  all  its  pathos, 
without  that  constant  tremor  (tremolo}  which  from  Tam- 
berlik's  day  to  the  present  has  been  so  overdone  as  to  dis- 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  g5 

figure  and  impair  the  effect  of  church-music  everywhere. 
Some  of  her  sustained  notes,  pure  and  unbroken  as  a  sun- 
ray,  went  to  the  heart  and  soul  with  a  force  that  tran- 
scends language..  One  felt  as  if  touched  by  the  wing  of 
the  angel  of  death — as  if  the  other  world  was  to  be  opened 
on  the  instant,  and  the  whole  nature  and  being  shuddered 
and  gasped  to  take  in  the  larger  life. that  was  coming. 
But  why  attempt  to  tell  about  it  ?  They  who  listened  re- 
member and  know  all  about  it;  those  who  did  not  can 
never  know. 

By  unanimous  request  the  choir  screen  was  taken  down, 
so  that  all  might  see  this  beautiful  woman  while  she  was 
singing  the  holiest  music.  She  did  not  object.  A  true 
woman,  she  loved  to  be  loved  and  admired,  but  no  man 
dared  ever  to  address  her.  Her  life  was  far  beyond  and 
above  that.  For  two  years  she  sang  twice  a  day  and 
sometimes  oftener  at  the  Cathedral;  the  intervals  between 
the  choir  services  were  spent  in  good  works.  She  it  was 
who  so  aided  me  in  the  "sky-surprises"  heretofore  alluded 
to.  She  died  without  sickness  and  without  pain,  and  the 
mightiest  concourse  that  ever  went  to  Hollywood  accom- 
panied her  to  her  grave.  Such  passionate  grief  I  never 
saw  exhibited  by  a  whole  people  as  was  exhibited  then. 
Her  tomb,  by  far  the  most  beautiful  in  Hollywood,  attests 
the  love  the  people  bore  her.  For  myself,  I  was  glad  that 
she  died.  My  own  end  was  near,  my  work  was  drawing 
to  a  close,  and  I  did  not  wish  to  be  long  parted  from  her. 

Not  the  least  of  Mahone's*  many  titles  to  distinction 
was  the  fact  that  in  my  time  he  was  almost  the  only  man  in 
Virginia,  so  far  as  my  large  acquaintance  went,  who  really 
cared  to  patronize  (no,  not  patronize,  but  to  encourage) 
Virginia  artists.  Virginia  was  then  passing  through  that 
phase  of  folly,  long  before  sneered  out  of  Great  Britain 
and  the  North,  which  is  marked  by  the  purchase  of  copies 
of  so-called  "  old  masters,"  wretched  in  conception  and 

*  His  first  name  was  William.  I  am  informed  that  he  took  some  part 
in  some  war  or  other  at  some  time  or  other,  but  what  war,  and  at  what 
time,  I  have  been  unable  to  ascertain.  It  is  said  that  long  years  ago 
there  were  railroad  wars,  but  what  railroad  wars  are,  no  newspaper- 
reporter,  lawyer,  or  member  of  the  legislature,  can  now  tell,  although 
I  have  offered  money  for  the  information. 


96  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

execution,  and  the  utter  neglect  of  works  of  merit  done 
at  home  by  native  artists.  I  employed  Elder,  Fisher,  and 
Sheppard,  at  twenty  thousand  dollars  per  aijnum  each 
(and  would  have  employed  Myers  at  the  same,  had  he 
not  gone  to  a  better  land),  to  work  exclusively  for  me. 
The  scenes,  the  life,  public  and  private,  of  the  blacks 
and  whites  of  Virginia  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  slavery, 
at  least  all  that  was  left  of  that  rapidly-disappearing  life, 
I  had  put  upon  canvas.  Woodward  painted  for  me  a 
dozen  or  so  of  charming  landscapes,  but  was  so  sought 
after  by  Northern  publishers^  that  I  could  seldom  get 
him  to  work  for  me.  In  addition  to  the  genre  pictures, 
executed  for  me  by  the  artists  named  above,  there  were  a 
number  of  historical  paintings  by  the  same,  which  I  pre- 
sented to  the  Virginia  Historical  Society.  Nearly  every 
one  of  these  pictures  commanded  the  approval  of  Mr.  G. 
Watson  James,*  but  other  critics,  including  myself,  were 
not  so  lenient.  I  soon  found  that  fixed  work,  done  to 
order,  however  highly  paid  for,  trammeled  the  free  spirit 
of  art,  and  palsied  the  genius  of  my  friends.  What  comes 
unprompted  into  their  own  heads  and  hearts,  what  is 
given  them  from  the  mysterious  original  font  of  power, — 
that  is  what  artists  want,  and  at  which  they  can  work 
best.  So  when  my  friends  got  tired,  and  could  paint  no 
more,  I  let  them  off,  pensioned  them  on  ten  thousand 
dollars  a  year,  and  allowed  them  to  paint  exactly  what 
they  pleased.  They  did  better  then.  And  meeting  them 
one  day  in  Jack's  studio,  I  said  to  them, — 

*  Art-critic  of  the  period,  the  only  man  connected  with  the  Richmond 
press  who  could  be  induced  to  take  any  real  interest  in  the  works  of  our 
Virginia  artists.  This  bold  and,  indeed,  desperate  young  man,  fell  at 
the  head  of  his  command  as  Captain  of  Hussars  in  the  ill-starred  attack 
upon  the  imperial  city.  I  opposed  the  assault  at  the  time  as  a  piece  of 
the  most  consummate  folly ;  but  it  was  fitting  that  the  rebellion  should 
have  ended  just  when  and  where  it  did. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


TWELFTH   INSTALLMENT. 

Tour  with  Artist-Friends — Suggestive  Summering — Badly  Apple-Bran- 
died — Judge  Crump — John  R.Thompson's  Tomb — Yankees — "The 
Last  of  Pea  Time" — Squirted  out  of  Town — Peter  Mayo  and  Alex- 
ander Cameron — Valentine's  Colossal  Statue — Dr.  W.  Hand  Browne — 
Adams's  "  Folly,"  Eleven  Hundred  Feet  High — Gala  Day  all  around 
the  Globe — Excitement  in  Lynchburg — Jack  Slaughter  and  Robin 
Terry — Trash  Green — Death  of  Wife — Badly  Kicked — Home  near 
Pamlin's  Depot. 

"  BOYS,  now  that  we  are  all  pretty  well  off,  suppose 
we  teach  these  rich  people  that  there  are  other  ways  of 
summering  than  by  going  to  mountain-resorts,  seasides, 
Saratogas,  Europes  and  things." 

"  Good  !•"  said  they  ;   "  what  shall  we  do?"  ' 

We  took  our  wives  and  children  (Fisher's  family  was 
immense,  and  Elder's  little  smaller),  plenty  of  large, 
clean,  well-made  tents,  cooks,  ostlers,  washerwomen, 
nurses,  and  other  servants,  with  dead  loads  of  cooking 
utensils,  fowling-pieces,  fishing-rods,  etc.,  and  no  end  of 
all  sorts  of  the  best  provisions  and  the  finest  wines,  and 
leisurely  made  our  way  up  through  the  Southside  coun- 
ties,  encamping  at  night,  or  on  rainy  days,  in  the  most 
charming  nooks,  dells,  glades,  and  forest  places  we  could 
find,  and  we  found  them  in  abundance,  and  more  beau- 
tiful than  we  dreamed  could  be  found.  The  children 
were  wild  with  joy  at  this  free  life;  the  boys  and  girls 
who  were  nearly  grown  found  a  fascination  in  this 
nomadic  existence  that  quite  enraptured  them,  and  the 
elders — upon  my  soul,  I  believe  they  enjoyed  it  even 
more  than  the  young  people  ! 

We  intended  originally  to  "do"  the  mountains  of 
Southwest  Virginia,  but  concluded  to  go  for  a  while  into 
Patrick  and  Henry,  a  field  little  known  to  artists  and 
tourists,  and  which  we  enjoyed  very  much.  Then  turn- 
ing, we  traveled  by  easy  stages  through  Pittsylvania, 
Halifax,  Mecklenburg,  Lunenburg,  Brunswick,  Greenes- 
ville,  Southampton,  etc.,  keeping  as  far  from  railroads 
E  9 


gS  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

as  possible,  and  saw  the  last,  the  very  last,  of  Old  Vir- 
ginia life.  The  pictures  of  negroes,  old  and  young  ;  of 
dilapidated  farms  and  farm-houses  of  every  kind  ;  the 
interiors  of  homesteads,  humble  and  proud  (once  proud), 
which  had  not  been  touched  by  war,  and  but  little  by 
time,  and  the  descriptions  accompanying  them,  done  by 
my  own  hand,  are  (I  make  bold  to  say  it)  by  odds  the 
best  that  ever  were  done  by  anybody,  and,  taken  as  a 
whole,  make  an  invaluable  compendium  for  the  historian 
and  antiquary.* 

Reaching  home  about  the  last  of  October,  delighted, 
without  ague,  although  we  had  been  badly  apple-brandied 
at  points,  our  account  of  our  travels  so  ravished  our 
friends  that  for  many  years  afterwards  tent-life  in  South- 
side  Virginia  became  extremely  fashionable,  and,  with 
various  modifications,  has  been  more  or  less  adopted  in 
all  parts  of  the  United  States — especially  by  the  wealthier 
classes,  and  by  hardy  young  men  who  despise  the  foolery 
of  springs  and  seasides.  Judge  W.  W.  Crump  took  the 
lead  in  this  wholesome  reform. f 

Soon  after  my  return,  I  walked  out  one  day  to  Holly- 
wood. There,  to  my  excessive  mortification,  I  found  that 
a  Northern  admirer  of  John  R.  Thompson  had  erected  a 
handsome  tomb  over  the  poet — a  gentle  soul,  that  loved 
above  all  things  to  do  a  kind  deed  for  foes  as  well  as 
friends.  Although  I  had  predicted  that  Virginians  would 
no  more  build  a  monument  to  Thompson  than  Ameri- 
cans to  Washington,  and  that  the  work  in  Hollywood, 
if  done  at  all,  would  be  done  by  a  Yankee,^  I  was  morti- 
fied none  the  less.  I  had  plenty  of  money — there  was 

*  It  was  published  in  folio  under  the  title  of  "  The  Last  of  Pea  Time." 
A  few  "  large-paper"  copies  are  now  in  the  hands  of  Dr.  Barney,  and 
Randolph  and  English.  • 

f  Prominent.  Roman-nosed  lawyer  of  the  period.  Hospitable  man — 
champagned  thirteen  Seventh  New  York  Regiment  men  to  death. 
Treated  me  to  breakfast  on  the  Great  Eastern,  and  I  never  forgot  him 
for  it.  His  son,  Edward,  was  also  good  to  me  in  North  Carolina,  and  I 
never  forgot  him  either. 

\  If  anybody  has  a  more  vitriolic  feeling  against  bad  Yankees  than 
I  have,  I  pity  him.  But  if  a  Yankee  is  a  good  Yankee  (there  are  such), 
I  like  him  all  the  better  for  being  a  Yankee.  It  is  like  falling  out  with 
a  fellow  at  school,  stopping  speaking  to  him,  and  then  making  up  again. 
Few  things  are  more  pleasant. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  99 

no  earthly  excuse  for  me;  but,  Virginian  like,  I  kept 
putting  it  off  and  off,  and  off.  I  am  ashamed  of  myself. 

Here  I  am  reminded  that  I  encouraged  as  much  as 
possible  the  erecting  by  wealthy  and  public-spirited  citi- 
zens of  single  figures  and  groups  in  bronze  or  marble, 
commemorative  of  incidents  and  characters  in  Virginia 
history,  at  various  points  along  the  boulevard  that  en- 
circled Richmond,  and  in  Parke  Park  allowed  a  few 
beautiful  tombs  to  be  built  in  suitable  situations.  Amid 
the  beauties,  natural  and  artificial,  of  the  park,  these 
tombs  fitted  in  admirably,  serving,  by  contrast,  and  a 
certain  tenderness  of  suggestion,  to  impart  an  increased 
and  hallowing  charm  to  the  scenery — much  like  the  un- 
dertone of  sadness  that  one  sometimes  finds  in  the  live- 
liest music.* 

In  a  moment  of  vanity  I  determined  to  reprint  every- 
thing I  had  ever  written — every  editorial,  magazine- 
article,  letter,  communication,  all  the  correspondence  of 
"Zed,"  "Hermes,"  "Malou,"  f  etc.,  etc.,  all  the  squibs 
of  every  kind  contributed  to  the  Lynchburg,  Richmond, 
Petersburg,  Orange  Court-House,  Baltimore,  New  York, 
Louisville,  Nashville,  Knoxville,  and  Gordonsville  papers, 
and  to  have  every  solitary  thing  down  to  the  puns  and 
conundrums  illustrated.  This  was  the  life-work  of  my 
friend,  that  excellent  man  and  accomplished  draughtsman, 
W.  L.  Sheppard.  Willie  got  along  finely  until  he  got  to 
the  loathsome  and  disgusting  article  on  "Spit;"!  in 
attempting  to  illustrate  that  he  was  attacked  with  such 
incessant  retching  and  persistent  nausea  that  he  fled  to 
Italy  for  relief,  and  had  to  stay  there  and  in  the  Alps  for 
three  years  before  he  was  cured.  For  a  time  he  was  (Dr. 
Brown-Sequard  assured  me)  as  badly  off  as  Sumner — had 

*  In  childhood,  when  the  sensibilities  are  keen,  there  is  a  foretelling  of 
the  coming  and  inevitable  sorrow  and  care  of  mature  life  in  all  music, 
particularly  in  that  of  the  piano. 

f  Letters  to  Richmond  Dispatch,  Charleston  (S.  C.)  Mercury,  and 
New  Orleans  Crescent — a  great  many  of  them — ought  to  be  among  my 
papers  now. 

J  Maddened  by  this  horrible  article,  the  tobacconists  of  Richmond,  led 
by  my  quondam  friends,  Mr.  Peter  Mayo  and  Mr.  Alexander  Cameron, 
filled  a  fire-engine  with  ambeer  and  actually  squirted  me  out  of  town.  I 
never  dared  to  return. 


I0o  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

to  have  the  moxa,  actual  cautery,  Vienna  paste,  hypo- 
dermics, etc.,  to  spine — but  did  eventually  get  well  with- 
out going  to  the  United  States  Senate. 

The  remaining  illustrations  were  done  by  Randolph 
Mason,  a  rising  young  artist,  and  my  books,  "  Adams's 
Complete  Works,"  in  twenty-six  volumes,  octavo,  were 
finally  published,  had  no  sale  except  in  odd  volumes, 
adorned  the  library  of  every  friend  to  whom  I  presented 
them,  and  afforded  me  during  my  declining  years  most 
delicious  reading.  I  can  say  with  perfect  truth  that  I 
never  enjoyed  any  author  half  so  much,  and  for  many 
years  never  read  any  other. 

In  another  moment  of  much  more  vanity  I  allowed  my 
friends  to  induce  Valentine  to  persuade  me  to  sit  for  my 
statue.  At  first  it  was  decided  to  have  the  statue  of 
bronze,  quadruple  life-size,  in  a  sitting  posture,  under  Mr. 
Exall's  lovely  duomo,  with  Hart's  sweet  little  Henry  Clay 
standing  up  in  my  lap,  with  my  hands  about  his  waist  and 
under  his  coat-tail,  dandling  him.  But  this,  though  neat 
and  suggestive,  it  was  thought  would  be  a  reflection  upon 
the  "Great  American  System,"  and  to  my  regret  was 
abandoned.  Then  it  was  unanimously  concluded  best  to 
build  me  in  the  attitude  of  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes,  forty 
feet  high,  straddling  the  City  Springs,*  in  copperas-colored 
pants,  and  long-tail,  bob-tail  coat,  striped  white  and  red 
vest,  oznaburg  shirt  with  open  collar,  no  cravat,  and  a 
straw  hat,  playing  upon  a  pumpkin-vine  horn  with  both 
hands,  after  the  manner  of  the  antique  performer  upon 
the  fistula  or  flute.  It  was  so  established,  and  the  remains 
of  it  remain  to  this  day.  The  material  used  was  an  ap- 
propriate clay  from  the  county  of  Powhatan,  the  same 
that  the  world-famous  pipesf  are  made  of.  Naughty  boys 
soon  "snow-balled  the  pumpkin-vine  out  of  my  hands,  and 
by  dint  of  large  pebbles  obtained  from  the  adjacent  gullies 

*  A  pretty  little  lot,  or  might  have  been  if  the  city  had  had  any  sense, 
between  Seventh  and  Eighth  Streets,  back  of  the  Mills  property.  In  1874 
it  was  used  for  the  storage  of  old  bricks,  which  were  tenderly  sheltered 
there  by  the  leafless  trees  from  the  fierce  rays  of  the  midwinter  sun. 

f  The  largest  factory  of  tobacco  pipes  in  the  world  is  mine  in  Powhatan 
County.  It  is  one  thousand  two  hundred  feet  long  and  seven  stories 
high,  with  a  capacity  of  four  hundred  thousand  pipes  per  diem.  They 
are  the  best  pipes  in  the  world,  and  are  superseding  all  others. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  IOI 

were  not  long  in  ridding  me  of  my  entire  head ;  but  the 
magnificent  torso  still  stands,  and  is  much  sought  after 
and  admired  by  Hellenists  from  Heidelberg  and  Bonn. 
Dr.  William  Hand  Browne  has  devoted  an  entire  "Green 
Table"  in  the  Southern  Magazine  to  a  discussion  of  its 
great  and  growing  merits.  In  revenge  for  this  ill  treat- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  boys,  I  directed  Valentine  to  fill 
me  an  order  for  seven  hunflred  busts  of  the  finest  and 
prettiest  women  of  my  acquantance,  which  he  did ;  they 
now  adorn  my  house  in  Appomattox. 

To  the  end  that  I  might  die  with  the  reputation  of 
being  the  best  loved  man  in  Virginia,  I  had  done  a  great 
many  good  and  wise  deeds — at  least  I  thought  so.  But 
before  I  started  to  do  anything  at  all,  I  tried  to  impress 
upon  myself  the  fact  which  I  had  long  known — that  there 
is  the  other  side  to  everything — that  existence,  life  itself, 
is  a  balance  of  opposing  qualities,*  and  that  no  wholly 
and  lastingly  good  thing  can  ever  be  done.  Flowers  rot, 
beauty  rots,  religions  rot,  and  the  rottenness  reappears  in 
beauty  again  forever  and  forever.  Life  rests  on  incessant 
putrescence.  Though  these  facts  were  ingrained  in  me, 
I  was  not  satisfied.  I  wanted  to  be  honored  of  Virginia 
men  and  to  be  hurrahed  over.  I  would  walk  whole 
squares  in  Richmond  without  having  a  hat  lifted  to  me  or 
a  small  boy  to  follow  me  and  to  say,  not  without  agita- 
tion, "that's  him."  This  would  never  do. 

Therefore  and  because  I  had  all  along  been  intent  upon 
it,  I  builded  my  Folly,  Adams's  Folly.  It  stands  in 
Scuflfletown  to  this  day,  upon  a  hill  carved  around  clean 
down  to  its  base  to  receive  it  and  be  its  pedestal,  to  be 
seen  and  to  be  seen  a  very  great  distance,  of  all  men.  It 
is  an  octagonal  mass  of  rough-hewn  siennite  that  rises 
some  one  thousand  one  hundred  (counting  from  the  river 
level,  one  thousand  three  hundred  and  fifty)  feet  in  air. 
Upon  its  top  there  is  a  bell,  compared  to  which  the  big 
bell  at  Moscow  is  but  an  infant's  thimble.  This  bell  rings 
of  itself  on  stormy  nights,  and  its  mournful  sound  is  heard 


*  So  that  if  there  be  no  hell  there  can  be  no  heaven.  The  thing  is  as 
long  as  it  is  broad.  Annihilation  is  your  only  hope,  Messrs.  Skeptic  and 
Scientist. 

9* 


102  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

in  Philadelphia.  [By  the  way,  I  had  intended  to  stop 
the  Folly  at  the  height  of  one  thousand  feet,  but  a  Phila- 
delphia centennial  creature  having  built  a  tower  that  high, 
I  went  one  hundred  feet  higher,  exclusive  of  the  cliff  on 
which  the  Folly  stands.]  Houses  in  Richmond  shake 
under  the  vibrations  of  this  bell,  nobody  sleeps  in  many 
counties  around  Lynchburg,  and  all  the  Tobacco  Row 
mountain  neighborhood  goes  to  prayers  at  sundown  and 
ceases  not  till  day  breaks  and  the  bell  stops  ringing.  It 
is  a  fearful  thing,  that  bell  lifted  up  upon  that  huge, 
rough  tower,  above  the  clouds  oftentimes.  There  are 
steps  inside,  but  everybody  prefers  to  ride  up  in  the  steam 
elevator  at  a  charge  of  twenty-five  cents.  Myriads  of 
people  come  to  see  it.  It  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
world.  The  annual  revenue  from  sight-seers  is  a  quarter 
of  a  million,  which  goes  into  the  Lynchburg  treasury  for 
the  support  of  the  poor  and  the  improvement  of  street 
grades.  People  have  ceased  to  be  bow-legged,  sway- 
backed,  and  knock-kneed  in  that  city.  A  splendid 
bridge  for  foot-passengers,  carriages  and  railway  trains  runs 
from  the  foot  of  the  Folly  tower  to  the  adjacent  hill-top 
in  Lynchburg,  is  much  resorted  to  by  industrious  burghers 
with  long  fishing-lines  (to  fish  in  the  river  for  mud- 
kittens  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  below),  and  is  of  great 
service  to  through  travel  on  the  Washington  City,  Vir- 
ginia Midland,  and  Great  Southern  Railroad.  I  do  not 
remember  what  the  thing  cost.  Mr.  A.  Y.  Lee*  was  the 
architect.  I  had  speculated  in  West  Virginia  coal  lands, 
made  one  hundred  millions  in  addition  to  my  original 
fifty  millions,  and  didn't  care  what  it  cost.  It  was  finished 
quicker  than  the  great  pyramid.  Five  hundred  thousand 
men  did  the  work  within  ten  years. 

Goodness  knows  I  was  honored  enough  when  the  Folly 
was  completed.  I  thought  I  would  be.  The  inaugura- 
tion day  was  a  gala  day  all  around  the  globe.  Men 
thought  the  tower  of  Babel  theory  was  overthrown,  as  if 
that  were  any  comfort.  I  happened  to  be  in  New  York 

*  An  able  man  in  his  calling,  but  his  resemblance  to  myself  produced 
in  him  a  mental  inquietude  that  ended  in  incurable  dyspepsia ;  which  I 
hope  will  be  a  wholesome  warning  to  others  not  to  look  like  me  if  they 
can  possibly  avoid  it. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


103 


arranging  with  my  publishers  when  I  was  telegraphed  for 
in  hot  haste.  Many  brass  bands,  Gesangveriens,  photo 
graphers,  several  yoke  of  strong-minded  women,  historical 
societies,  a  herd  of  reporters,  and  three  Schutzenfests 
accompanied  me.  It  was  a  triumphal  march  the  whole 
way.  I  was  transported  through  Washington  in  a  palan- 
quin, toted  by  four  members  of  the  cabinet,  the  Emperor 
in  front  and  on  foot,  clearing  the  way  with  a  black  wagon- 
whip  with  brass  nails  in  the  handle.  The  train,  drawn 
by  six  to  ten  locomotives,  stretched  from  Alexandria  to 
Fairfax  Station  nearly.  All  Orange  Court-House,  Gor- 
donsville,  and  Charlotteville  fell  down  in  the  red  dust 
before  me  as  the  train  went  by.  Not  a  living  soul  was 
left  in  the  Ragged  Mountains.  The  keeper  of  the  Miller 
Orphan  Asylum*  set  fire  to  the  institution,  and  went 
along  with  the  rest  on  foot  before  day.  I  disembarked 
on  the  Amherst  side,  descended  the  gulch  into  which  the 
old  toll  bridge  leads,  and  in  a  linen  duster  commenced 
the  ascent  of  a  grand  staircase  (hewn  out  of  the  living 
rock)  which  begins  precisely  on  the  spot  where  old  Aunt 
Sally  Taylorf  used  to  live.  All  Virginia  seemed  to  be 
around  me.  Although  the  world  claimed  the  Folly  as  a 
boon  to  humanity,  Virginia  claimed  it  as  her  own.  Now 
this  great  State  would  be  settled  up ;  now  our  unrivaled 
natural  resources  would  be  developed,  and  now,  beyond 
all  shadow  or  possibility  of  peradventure,  Norfolk  would 
become  the  greatest  seaport  of  the  earth,  and  New  York 
and  Baltimore  would  be  nowhere.  The  big  bell  tolled. 
The  people  (the  landscape  was  black  with  them)  hollered. 
I  detected  the  voice  of  Trash  Green. J  It  was  a  great 
time. 


*  Unfortunately,  most  of  the  orphans  were  too  badly  charred  to  be  of 
future  use,  but  the  enterprising  negroes  of  Gordonsville  got  the  remainder 
(about  two  hundred  and  fifty),  kept  them  on  ice  in  Dr.  Cadmus's  wine- 
cellar,  and  for  eighteen  months  orphan  sandwiches,  called  chicken  breast 
for  short,  were  disposed  of  at  great  profit  and  much  relished  along  with 
Jim  Scott's  grapes. 

|  Kept  a  little  tavern  there.  When  John  Brown,  nephew  of  Boss 
Cauthorn,  lived  at  Dr.  Seay's  drug  store,  we  used  to  go  over  there  and 
get  breakfast  on  Sunday  mornings — good  breakfasts  they  were,  too. 

J  Lynchburg  fishmonger  of  the  period.  Worthy,  good  temperance 
man  ;  dressed  nicely — breastpin  and  gloves. 


104 


WHAT  I  DID   WITH 


At  the  head  of  the  grand  staircase,  Mr.  Robin  Terry* 
(in  the  attitude  of  Virginia  or  the  Goddess  of  Liberty,  in 
a  bell-crowned  hat  with  curved  brim,  and  trampling  on 
the  prostrate  form  of  Mr.  Jack  Slaughterf)  received  me. 
Over  their  heads,  Mr.  Tom  Stabler^  on  the  one  side  and 
Mr.  Bob  Latham  on  the  other  held  aloft  the  great  motto 
in  golden  letters,  Sic  Semper  Tyrannis.  Mr.  Terry's 
speech  was  a  noble  effort.  When  he  let  up,  Jack  Slaugh- 
ter and  the  latter  put  off  the  robes  of  the  tyrant,  and 
donned  his  own  sack-coat,  and  proclaimed  that  the  days 
of  the  grinding  oppression  of  poverty  in  Virginia  were 
ended,  to  return  no  more  while  time  lasted,  there  went 
up  a  shout  that  shook  the  hills,  and  made  the  Folly  wab- 
ble from  base  to  summit.  My  reply  to  these  admirable 
addresses  was  a  feeble  one, — I  wanted  to  go  to  Peter 
Wren's,  and  take  a  nip  of  plain  whisky  and  water — but 
all  the  Lynchburg  papers,  all  the  Virginia  papers,  and  all 
the  papers  all  over  the  world  said  it  was  a  sublime  effort. 
I  doubt  it.  Then  the  people  went  delirious  with  excite- 
ment and  delight,  and  I  went  to  the  Washington  House 
and  went  to  bed.  Scoville  said  he  thought  I  was  sick. 
It  was  a  great  time. 

Sated  with  human  applause,  and  conscious  that  my 
Folly,  not  my  sense  or  my  goodness,  had  won  it,  my 
parks,  banks,  factories,  churches,  cathedrals,  music-halls, 
colleges,  and  lecture-rooms  all  running  more  or  less  suc- 
cessfully, naught  much  [N.  M.  is  respectfully  submitted 
to  the  Dispatch — Ed.  Whig]  remained  for  me  to  do — 
time  was  for  me  to  depart.  We  all  do  fade  as  a  leaf. 
Moreover,  between  the  tens  and  twenties  [of  1900,  doubt- 
less—  Whig],  my  dear,  good  wife  went  from  me.  What 
she  was  to  me — her  forbearance,  her  long-suffering,  her 
uncomplaining  patience,  her  devotion  to  our  children, 

*  New  London  academy  pedagogue  of  the  period.  Good  teacher  and 
fine  fellow. 

t  Lynchburg  double-barreled  banker  of  the  period.  I  liked  Jack  in 
spite  of  his  money.  He  and  Bob  Broadnax,  myself,  and  somebody  else, 
used  to  play  whist  together,  and  have  very  good  times. 

J  Husband  of  one  of  the  finest  women  in  Virginia.  Early-rising  tobacco 
warehouse-man  of  the  day  and  date  above  mentioned.  Brother-in-law 
of  the  best  brothers  and  sisters-in-law  going  at  that  time,  and  for  some 
time  previous  and  afterwards. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  IO5 

and,  above  all,  her  clear  understanding  of  the  whimsies 
incident  to  my  peculiar  temperament,  and  of  those  who 
preceded  me  and  gave  me  my  temperament, — why  tell  of 
these,  or  who  cares  to  hear  them  ?  She  it  was  who  en- 
noble womankind  (always  loveable  before  I  knew  her) 
and  humanity  in  my  eyes.  I  cannot  praise  her  as  Stuart 
Mill  praised  his  wife, — a  woman  no  whit  the  superior  of 
mine  in  moral  if  in  mental  (which  I  doubt)  nature,  but 
this  I  will  say  of  her — that  a  more  thoroughly  truthful 
soul,  a  more  loyal  and  steadfast  friend,  never  dwelt  on 
this  planet.  The  man  or  woman  who  had  her  friendship 
(not  that  it  was  hard  to  get)  had  that  which  was  above 
price,  and  which  only  persistent  crime,  meanness,  or 
lying  could  take  away.  That  I  shall  be  worthy  to 
draw  nigh  unto  her  in  the  other  life  I  very  much  question, 
but  this  I  hope — that  on  some  celestial  morning  two 
bright  sinless  boys  will  take  the  poor  newly-come  sinner 
between  them  and,  leading  him  to  her  sweet  presence, 
say,— 

"  Mother,  receive  him  for  our  sake." 

She  died  before  she  was  seventy,  in  the  prime  of  the 
strength  which  came  to  her  late  in  life,  when  the  cares, 
griefs,  and  toils  of  her  clouded  youth  and  early  woman- 
hood were  ended  ;  and  I  mourned  her  truly,  as  a  man 
mourns  who  has  no  other  friend  this  side  the  grave.* 
Ah,  me  !  how  many,  many  friends  there  are  now  on  the 
other  side  !  I  hope  they  all  are  still  my  friends,  for 
often,  and  often,,  and  often  my  heart  goes  out  how 
warmly  to  them.  I  do  not  forget  them.  They  are  with 

*  This  estimable  woman  came  to  her  death  in  a  singular  and  affecting 
way.  Her  maiden  name  was  Ellen  F.  Glennan,  the  daughter  of  a  Pro- 
testant Irish  curate — see  letter  from  Washington  City,  1858,  or  there- 
abouts. From  the  time  of  our  marriage  she  had  a  passion  for  second-hand 
wooden  presses,  equalled  only  by  S.  Jackson's  craze  for  Yankee  baggage- 
wagons.  She  preferred  cheap  green,  but  would  take  cheaper  red  presses 
whenever  she  could  find  them,  and  never  got  enough  of  them.  Late  in 
life  she  conceived  the  idea  of  a  three-story  much  complicated  pine  press 
in  as  many  several  sections,  had  it  made  to  order,  and  while  putting  it 
up  herself  (she  would  never  let  any  one  do  for  her  what  she  herself  could 
do)  the  upper  section  toppled  over  upon  her,  mashed  her  flat  as  a 
flounder,  and  the  poor,  tired,  hard-working  hands  were  at  rest.  Her 
maiden  name  was  Ellen  F.  Glennan,  the  daughter  of,  etc.  [the  poor  old 
gentleman  forgets  that  he  has  already  told  us  this. — Ed.  Whig] 
E* 


I06  WHAT  I  DID   WITh 

me  now  more  than  are  my  living  friends — far  more.  I 
feel  their  presence,  their  veritable  existence.  They  live 
in  me. 

No  man  knows,  not  even  the  widower  himself,  how  much 
he  suffers.  Cleave  frail  man  smoothly  from  calvarium  to 
os  coccygiss&<\&.  it  is  but  natural  that  he  should  desire  to 
find  his  lost  if  not  better  half,  and  not  go  single-legged 
and  with  only  one  eye  on  the  world  all  his  days.  It  is 
for  this  cause  that  widowers  walk  lop-sided  and  hip-shot, 
and  are  so  anxious  to  get  married  again.  Not  that  they 
want  to  marry  for  the  mere  sake  of  marrying — well  they 
know  that  is  not  what  it  is  cracked  up  to  be — but  they 
feel  a-cold  on  one  side,  and  yearn  to  pour  out  their  grief 
on  some  friendly  and  sympathetic  bosom.  Thus  the  early 
courting  of  widowers,  which  is  so  much  decried,  is,  if  we 
did  but  know  it,  a  secret  commingling  of  tears  for  the 
loved  and  lost  one ;  and  as  the  commingling  is  all  done 
and  over  by  the  time  the  new  marriage  comes  off,  it  is  but 
fit  and  proper  that  the  two  grief-relieved  souls  should  be  a 
trifle  gay  and  cheerful.  But  they  often  cry  together  after- 
wards— especially  the  lady. 

Being  a  lad  of  a  little  upwards  of  a  century,  and  main- 
taining, as  widowers  all  do,  that  I  was  unfazed  by  time 
and  as  good  as  ever  stuck  axe  in  a  tree,  which  I  was  not 
and  never  had  been,  it  was  natural  and  becoming  that  I 
should  want  to  get  married  again  without  indecorous  and 
heartless  delay ;  but  that  I  should  make  such  a  poop  and 
rancid  old  ass  of  myself  as  to  court  a  mischievous  little 
miss  of  six-and-twenty,  or  thereabouts,  I  could  not  have 
believed.  I  did,  though.  There  was  a  blue-eyed,  red- 
faced,  yellow-haired  girl  at  Ca  Ira  (I  moved  to  the  country 
soon  after  my  wife  died),  that  wound  me  around  her  finger, 
trotted  me  around,  showed  me  off,  made  a  laughing-stock 
of  me,  and  then  kicked  me  into  the  infinite  void*  with 
the  full  and  unrelenting  power  of  a  very  ponderous  limb. 
That  woman  lied  to  me  in  every  conceivable  way.  She 
lied  with  her  eyes,  she  lied  with  her  smiles,  she  lied  with 

•f  Lifted  at  the  acute  toe-point  into  The  Inane,  I  found  there  a  little 
mud-god  named  Carlyle,  in  the  arms  of  Frederick  the  Great,  and  Dr. 
Francia  standing  by,  feeding  him  with  gobs  of  disjointed  German  text, 
done  up  in  oatmeal,  out  of  a  spoon. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


107 


her  gestures,  with  a  thousand  undulations  of  her  graceful 
body ;  her  life,  for  six  months,  was  a  continuous  and  un- 
broken lie,  only  she  did  not  tell  me  in  actual  words  that 
she  loved  me.  And  so,  with  a  conscience  void  of  offense, 
she  went  off  and  married  a  Pikelin  or  some  such  creature. 
But  what  a  conscience  !  A  cambric  thread  of  the  finest 
fibre  would  cover  it  like  a  counterpane.  And  yet  nature, 
in  her  ample  indifference  (/can't  call  it  economy),  has  a 
place  for  myriads  of  such  immoral  nits.  The  good  of 
them  at  any  time,  past,  present,  and  to  come,  is  not  ap- 
parent to  me.  To  Pikelins  and  such  they  may  be  blessing, 
possibly.  But  as  for  me,  I  am  done  with  women.  We  all 
do  fade  as  a  leaf. 

When  my  mind  was  made  up  to  move  finally  into  the 
country  (my  summers  having  heretofore  been  spent  in 
various  rural  retreats,  so  called,  which  I  had  purchased 
from  time  to  time),  I  did  not  set  to  work  with  my  abundant 
money  to  re-create  the  Domain  of  Arnheim  on  Poe's 
plan,  the  cottage  of  Landor,  a  villa  in  the  Italian  style,  or 
anything  of  the  kind.  My  highest  ambition  was  to  rebuild 
Captain  Grigg's  house  just  as  it  was  in  the  olden  time,  and 
this  I  would  certainly  have  done  had  not  all  or  nearly  all 
the  trees  between  there  and  the  Knob  been  cut  down. 
The  place  was  too  open  aTid  exposed.  I  bought  Evans's 
mill  and  all  the  land  I  could  get  in  the  neighborhood, 
divided  it  up  into  farms,  with  snug  farm-houses,  etc.,  and 
portioned  them  out  to  the  children  of  William  Gannaway 
and  William  Anderson,  my  cousins.  For  myself  I  found 
no  resting  place  for  the  sole  of  my  foot  until  I  got  into 
the  wooded  country  near  Parrrplin's  Depot.  There  I  built 
an  exact  fac  simile  of  Captain  Grigg's — a  little  dormer- 
storied  house,  with  a  cool  basement  dining-room  and 
cellar  adjoining,  a  front  porch  with  saddle-closet  cut  off 
from  it,  big  outside  chimneys  (to  encourage  the  friends  of 
<ny  childhood — toads),  a  covered  brick  passage  for  the 
wind  to  blow  through,  the  water-pail,  and  the  wood  ready 
chopped  for  the  fire,  to  set  in,  and  then  a  tail  of  little 
rooms  on  different  levels  run-ning  down  the  hill — so  that 
you  had  to  step  up  or  down  to  get  into  any  room  in  the 
house.  I  had  a  barn,  stable,  corn-house,  kitchen,  quarters, 
dairy  with  F-like  lattice-work  under  the  eaves,  a  well,  a 


I08  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

glorious  well,  with  well-house  over  it,  a  carriage-house, 
horse-block  and  rack,  spring  and  spring-house  fifty  yards 
or  so  from  the  dwelling,  a  damson  tree  or  two,  with  some 
greengage  plums  in  the  yard,  oaks,  aspens,  and  locusts,  a 
regular  ley-hopper,  big  biscuit-block  and  great  open  fire- 
place in  the  kitchen,  hen-hovels,  duck-troughs,  meat- 
house,  weaving-room,  loom,  vast  gobbler,  an  authoritative 
rumpless  rooster,  devoted  to  the  society  of  the  ladies,  and 
a  square-shouldered,  deliberate  drake,  very  affable  to  his 
family,  flax-hackles,  reel,  wool-cards,  spinning-wheels, 
everything,  including  peacock  and  chatty  guinea  chickens. 
Other  people  might  live  as  they  pleased,  I  intended  to  live 
like  a  Virginian.  I  had  money  and  money  "in  a  plenty;" 
why  not?  In  my  garden  were  lilacs  and  hollyhocks, 
gooseberries,  raspberries,  currants,  etc.,  a  fig  bush  or  two, 
some  hazelnut  bushes,  artichokes  and  grass-nuts ;  a  patch 
for  broomcorn,  and  reeds  for  fishing-poles,  gourds  along 
the  fence  and  cymlins  at  intervals;  I  had  besides,  a  nice 
pond  with  abundant  bullfrogs,  a  dam  and  mill-pond  full 
of  chub  and  silver  perch,  and  an  old-fashioned  saw-mill, 
with  a  saw  that  worked  up  and  down  like  a  distracted  man 
in  a  jump-jacket.  This  for  company  when  I  felt  lone- 
some ;  and  as  I  took  good  care  not  to  cultivate  much  of 
my  land,  there  was  never  wanting  gullies  and  galls,  with 
a  pretence  of  bresh  and  corn-stalks  to  cure  them — I 
wouldn't  have  cured  'em  for  the  world — great  store  of 
mulleins,  hen-nest  grass,  sassafras,  thorn-bushes,  Chero- 
kee plums  in  detached  squads,  isolated  persimmon-trees, 
brier  patches,  dewberry  vines,  old  fields  with  and  without 
old  field  pines — good  for  setting-turkeys  and  old  hares — 
a  right  sharp  chance  of  sour,  sobby,  crawfishy  land,  some 
puffy  land,  some  places  where  the  water  seeped  out,  some 
old  gray  not  quite  dead  cherry-trees,  a  lost  and  rather 
bony  Lombardy  poplar  or  so,  some  huge  high  pines  not 
far  from  the  house  for  the  sake  of  woodpeckers,  low- 
grounds  for  kildees  and  watermelons,  a  good-sized  creek 
with  three  or  four  regularly  baited  fishing-places,  a  col- 
lection of  tall  naked  sycamores  for  buzzards  to  roost  in, 
four  mules,  three  yoke  of  oxen,  twelve  caws  to  the  pail,  a 
jinny  and  a  hinny,  an  amiable  sleepy-headed  horse  for  my 
own  riding,  and  a  milk  and  cider  filly,  with  a  side-saddle, 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


109 


nankeen  riding-skirt,  and  sun-bonnet  for  any  lady  who 
might  happen  to  pay  me  a  visit. 

I  had  also  not  quite  a  gross  of  hounds,  beagles,  point- 
ers, setters,  bulldogs,  and  bench-leg  fice,  all  to  keep  com- 
pany, and  a  sociable  but  exasperating  cat,  that  would  sit 
and  doze,  and  blink  by  the  fire,  and  see  a  mouse  run  up 
my  breeches  leg,  and  blink  and  doze  and  look  up  in  my 
face  like  an  insensate,  hairy,  slit-eyed  Chinese  simpleton, 
until  I  didn't  know  what  I  was  ready  to  do  to  that  cat  if 
I  hadn't  been  superstitious  and  afraid.  A  cat  like  that  is 
a  bad  cat.  I  had  me  also  a  convenient  wood-pile  (nothing 
but  wood  was  burnt  in  my  house),  with  plenty  of  oak  and 
hickory,  plenty  of  pine  too,  and  lots  of  chips  and  light- 
wood  knots,  with  a  white-oak  basket  (not  a  big,  new  white 
white-oak  basket,  but  a  little  old  black  white-oak  basket, 
with  a  hole  burnt  in  one  side,  jagged  edges,  and  a  swing- 
ing handle,  loose  at  one  end),  to  hold  my  chips  and  corn 
husses. 


THIRTEENTH.  INSTALLMENT. 

A  Lonely  Old  Age — Dark  and  Bitter  Thoughts — Arrival  of  the  Commo- 
dore— Throwing  Mexican  Dollars — A  Negro  Killed — A  Stormy  Night 
— Trouble  of  Life's  Ending — Misery  of  this  World — Hallucinations — 
In  the  Fodder-stack — A  Voice. 

AND  yet  I  was  not  happy.*  For  a  time,  indeed,  all 
went  well.  My  negroes  (the  men  dressed  in  nappy  cot- 
ton and  the  women  in  striped  homespun)  behaved  very 
well.  People  came  to  see  me,  dined  with  me,  and  talked 
politics.  My  Curdsville  fiddler  was  always  ready  to  enter- 
tain them,  a  negro  boy  was  never  wanting  to  fetch  a  pail 
or  can  of  fresh  water  (I  had  a  cocoanut  rimmed  with  silver 
and  a  real,  regular  sweet  old  gourd  to  drink  out  of),  or  to 

*  In  my  time  it  was  thought  to  be  very  funny  to  say  "  and  yet  I  am  not 
happy."  The  oftener  it  was  said  the  funnier  it  was  thought  to  be.  I 
consider  people  as  amongst  the  most  curious  human  beings  I  ever  saw. 
Mules  and  members  of  the  legislature  come  next. 

16 


HO  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

bring  a  coal  of  fire  between  two  chips  from  the  kitchen  in 
summer-time  to  light  our  pipes  with,  or  to  get  some  mint 
from  the  mint  bed.  In  a  word,  I  led  the  life  of  an  old 
Virginian  with  plenty  of  money,  and  enjoyed  it.  But 
times  changed  ;  settlers  from  all  parts  of  the  world  began 
to  crowd  up  to  and  around  my  plantation ;  no  wages 
could  tempt  the  negroes  from  going  to  the  negro  districts 
of  the  South ;  people  ceased  to  come  to  me  except  for 
money  (my  Folly  had  left  me  but  a  few  millions  and  I 
got  tired  of  everlasting  giving)  ;  my  Curdsville  fiddler, 
getting  lonesome,  left  me  never  to  return,  and  finally  I 
was  left  alone  with  an  old  negro  cook  (women  stick  to 
men  to  the  last),  her  grand-daughter,  and  one  or  two 
great  grand-sons.  With  them  I  got  along  after  a  fashion, 
but  it  was  a  mournful  fashion.  The  garden  and  a  few 
outside  acres  under  cultivation  supplied  me  with  roasting 
ears  and  turnip  greens.  I  had  generally  a  roast  shoat  in 
season,  sometimes  a  lamb,  a  full  supply  of  chickens,  and 
you  may  be  sure  the  negroes  took  good  care  not  to  let  me 
get  out  of  hog  meat. 

I  grew  morbid.  Fishing  palled  on  me,  jogging  about 
on  my  sway-back  mare  became  tiresome,  sitting  under  my 
favorite  pine  and  listening  to  its  soughing  brought  recol- 
lections «no  longer  tender  but  only  sad  and  full  of  vain 
longing  for  the  friends  that  had  gone  before  me;  trim- 
ming the  knots  on  a  hickory  stick  brought  no  comfort, 
my  eyesight  failed  as  my  hearing  had  long  before,  appe- 
tite failed,  and  even  the  reading  of  my  books,  when  I 
could  read  at  all,  and  the  wondering  admiration  of  myself 
in  my  better  days*  served  but  to  irritate  me.  One  of  the 
greatest  of  calamities — a  lonely  old  age — had  befallen  me. 

My  thoughts  grew  dark  and  bitter,  darker  and  more 
bitter  day  by  day,  as  the  lonesome  months  went  by.  Oh 
for  the  sight  of  the  face  of  a  single  friend  of  my  youth 
and  early  manhood  !  But  they  were  gone — my  children 
and  grandchildren,  the  children  and  grandchildren  of  the 
thousands  I  had  befriended,  were  scattered  and  gone.  I 
was  forgotten  by  the  human  race.  Desire  had  failed,  the 
possibility  of  enjoyment  was  forever  past.  Aches  and 

*  "  My  God,  what  genius  I  had  then !"     Swift  in  his  dotage. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


Ill 


pains  were  not  lacking  to  fill  up  the  measure  of  my  misery. 
I  had  outlived  life — the  saddest  of  all  the  evil  things  of 
which  this  sad,  bad  world  is  full.  I  could  not  think  a 
bright  or  cheering  thought;  no  one  wanted  me  now  to 
do  a  good  deed.  I  was  unremembered,  yet  alive  and 
suffering.  All  the  low,  vile,  underhand,  over-reaching, 
treacherous,  mean,  and  contemptible  actions  and  trans- 
actions of  all  the  men  I  had  ever  known  came  back  to  me 
with  terrific  force,  and  abode  with  me.  I  could  not  get 
rid  of  them.  Recalling  all  I  had  done  for  my  State  and 
its  people,  seeing  how  neglected  and  steeped  in  solitary 
woe  and  pain  I  was,  I  hated  and  despised  my  race  with 
the  hatred  and  despite  of  a  soured  and  impotent  old  age. 
My  soul  was  full  of  gall  and  desire  to  do  harm. 

I  forgot  the  torrents  of  crime,  wave  after  wave,  world- 
wide and  high  in  volume  (committed?  no!  only  not  com- 
mitted for  want  of  opportunity)  that  had  passed  through 
me  time  and  again,  oh  !  so  often  ;  and  I  forgot  (God 
help  me)  the  myriads  of  kindnesses  that  had  been  done 
to  me  and  mine ;  to  me  by  my  uncle  James,  his  family 
and  my  other  kin;  to  me  by  hundreds  of  newspaper  men, 
other  men  too ;  to  my  dear  wife  during  her  long,  long 
sickness;  to  my  dear  old  father  by  black  and  white  in 
Tappahannock.  I  forgot  the  love  and  the  prayers,  so 
undeserved,  the  forgiving  and  forgetting  that  had  followed 
all  through  my  life.  I  forgot  these  things.  I  remembered 
only,  thought  only  of  the  meanness,  the  misery  and  the 
wickedness  (there  is  plenty  of  all  three)  of  this  wretched 
existence. 

Fortunately  for  me  I  retained  enough  sense  to  know 
that  action,  action  is  the  only  cure  for  the  crime  of  over- 
contemplation  and  brooding.  It  was  but  little  I  could 
do,  but  that  little  I  did  with  all  my  small  remaining 
strength.  I  plodded  around  my  plantation,  trying  to 
study  animal  and  vegetable  nature,  and  running  the  risk 
daily  of  tumbling  into  some  ditch,  gully  or  branch,  and 
so  drowning  myself.  I  would  have  rather  liked  that.  It 
was  of  no  use;  still  I  trudged,  and  still  I  brooded  over  the 
ills  of  life  and  the  vileness  of  human  nature.  How  long 
this  would  have  lasted  it  is  useless  to  conjecture,  but  one 
day  as  I  was  toiling  slowly  up  a  hill  a  strange,  very  strange 


1I2  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

apparition  on  the  top  attracted  my  attention.  Amazed 
and  very  much  frightened,  too,  I  stood  still  in  my  tracks, 
and  the  thing,  whatever  it  was,  came  on.  I  was  unarmed 
and  greatly  scared. 

To  my  intense  relief  it  proved  to  be  the  automaton 
of  Commodore  Porter.  Eustace,  having  made  a  fortune 
out  of  him,  had  sold  him  to  a  subsidiary  side-showman, 
from  whom  the  Commodore,  indignant,  had  escaped  in 
the  night.  Wandering  indefinitely  about  the  country, 
various  Vandal  malignants  had  evilly  entreated  him,  and 
he  appeared  before  me  in  a  calash,  a  cavalry  sword  and 
boots,  a  hoop-skirt  and  bustle,  no  other  clothes,  and  his 
machinery  inside  working  visibly  and  violently.  One 
hand  was  tied  behind  him,  in  the  other  he  held  the  tall 
staff  of  Terrill  of  Bath,  that  resembled  an  exaggerated 
parasol-handle  of  the  period,  and  his  mind,  or  rather  the 
mechanism  of  it,  was  excited,  for  the  evil  entreaters  had 
broken  off  a  part  of  his  tongue,  and  strapped  the  rest  of 
it  down,  so  that  he  could  not  make  himself  intelligible 
at  all. 

"Commodore,"  said  I,  "they  seem  to  have  served 
thee  badly." 

He  made  no  reply — gritted  his  teeth  in  wrath,  and 
glared  at  me.  I  could  not  laugh  at  so  hapless  a  being, 
but  was  both  distressed  and  delighted  to  see  him,  and  he 
was  so  glad  at  last  to  meet  a  friend  that  he  shed  a  few 
kerosene  tears  (his  eyes,  his  joints  and  journals  were 
greased  with  that  excellent  unguent)  of  relief,  and  we 
went  joyfully  home  together.  In  a  day  or  two  I  had 
him  dressed  nicely  in  a  suit  of  my  old  clothes,  a  little 
too  short  in  the  arms  and  legs  for  him,  but  comfortable ; 
his  tongue  untied,  his  slides,  hinges  and  wheels  all  freshly 
oiled,  and  the  whole  man  in  elegant  running  order.  He 
was  fine  company  for  me  for  awhile,  but,  as  old  men  will 
do,  we  gradually  grew  morose,  and  longed  for  some  ex- 
citement. Action,  action  was  what  we  wanted  ;  we  were 
tired  of  smoking.  My  faculty  of  invention  had  not  alto- 
gether deserted  me,  so  I  sent  for  several  salt-sacks  full  of 
silver  Mexican  dollars,  and  amused  myself  for  days  by 
throwing  them  at  the  bodies  and  faces  of  poor  men  of 
the  vicinage,  allowing  them  to  take  every  dollar  that  hit 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  II3 

them,  the  Commodore  picking  up  the  dollars  that  missed 
and  bringing  them  back  to  me,  and  relishing  the  sport 
hugely.  After  a  fellow  had  an  eye,  or  two  or  three  teeth 
knocked  out,  he  generally  went  home  ;  but  one  wretched 
man,  with  the  worst  face  I  ever  saw,  allowed  both  eyes, 
all  of  his  upper  and  lower  front  teeth  to  be  knocked  out, 
his  nose  mashed  flat,  and  cut  in  two,  and  his  forehead  to 
be  completely  skinned  before  he  gave  up. 

"There,  Commodore,"  said  I,  "that  is  the  natural 
human  greed  for  money ;  did  you  ever  see  the  like  of  it; 
would  you,  could  you  have  believed  it?" 

The  Commodore  merely  laughed.  But  when  I  learned 
that  the  poor  man  had  stood  all  this  for  the  sake  of  an 
afflicted  wife  and  children,  it  nearly  killed  me,  although 
I  gave  him  a  sack  of  silver  to  ease  my  conscience.* 

The  Commodore  had  often  begged  me  to  let  him  try 
his  hand,  but  he  was  so  powerful  I  was  afraid ;  one  day, 
however,  I  consented.  He  threw  the  first  dollar  smack 
through  a  stalwart  negro,  back-bone  and  all,  and  it  took 
the  rest  of  our  silver  to  buy  off  judge  and  jury,  and  to 
save  ourselves  from  being  hanged.  This  put  an  end  to 
our  sport. 

We  grew  more  and  more  melancholy  and  savage, 
and  I  got  more  and  more  afraid  of  the  Commodore.  I 
couldn't  bear  to  let  him  run  down  completely,  for  that 
would  be  depriving  myself  of  all  society ;  but  he  became 
so  ill-natured  and  dangerous,  that  I  had  to  keep  him  only 
partially  wound  up — which  made  him  madder  than  ever. 
He  had  a  hole  in  his  back,  and  a  key,  kept  in  a  box 
under  his  ribs,  with  which  he  was  set  going ;  and,  his 
springs  being  tremendous,  it  took  all  my  strength  to 
wind  him  thoroughly.  Unluckily  for  me,  he  discovered 
that  by  inserting  a  door-knob  in  the  hole  in  his  back 
and  by  whirling  himself  around  he  could  wind  himself 
up,  which  he  did,  and  came  down  stairs  to  my  room  a 
good  many  times,  and  whaled  me  very  cruelly.  The 
wonder  is  that  he  didn't  kill  me.  I  wish  he  had,  for 

*  He  proved  to  be  a  tailor  of  the  neighborhood — an  excellent,  sensible, 
good  man,  much  like  my  old  friend  Benson,  the  grandfather  of  E.  B. 
Spence,  of  Richmond.  Mr.  B.  had  but  one  defect;  he  could  not  tell 
cabbage  from  cribbage. 

10* 


now  life  was  but  a  constant  terror.  Finally,  I  hit  upon 
the  plan  of  greasing  the  door-knobs  (strange  he  never 
found  it  out !),  and  that,  and  that  alone,  prolonged  my 
days.  It  was  a  frightful  strain  upon  my  failing  memory 
not  to  forget  to  grease  my  knobs,  every  one  of  them. 
My  cook  and  the  other  servants  wouldn't  have  done  it 
for  the  world — they  had  a  mortal  terror  of  the  Commo- 
dore, and  ran  for  their  lives  at  the  very  sight  of  him. 
A  sad,  sad  time  I  had. 

There  came  a  night — well  do  I  remember  it — a  wild 
night,  towards  the  end  of  December,  a  night  of  tempest 
and  thick  darkness.  A  lean  and  very  aged  man,  full  of 
pain  and  troublous  thoughts,  lay  in  his  bed.  For  him 
there  was  but  one  sentience,  and  one  sufferer  in  the  uni- 
verse. Outside,  the  fierce  wind  poured  its  flood,  pausing 
ever  and  anon  only  to  gain  added  strength  and  fierceness. 
What  cared  the  wind  for  the  aching  and  mind-tormented 
centenarian  ?  The  house  shuddered  from  end  to  end ; 
there  were  whisperings  under  doors  and  through  key- 
holes ;  challenges  and  replies  anear  and  afar,  rustlings 
and  passings  outside  the  shaking  casements,  noiseless 
goings  to  and  fro,  and  tellings  of  unknown  things  in  in- 
articulate tongues  of  those  without  to  those  within  ;  un- 
usual and  great  business  and  bustle  in  ghostland.  Terrors 
were  about  and  abroad — strange  work,  God  wot,  to  be 
done.  My  poor  friend,  automaton  as  he  was,  came  down 
in  abject  affright,  crouched  close  to  my  bedside  beside 
the  hearth,  almost  emberless  now,  and  said  no  word. 
The  trouble  of  life's  ending  was  upon  me.  I  could  not 
sleep.  I  arose,  dressed  myself,  paid  no  heed  to  the  out- 
stretched supplicating  wooden  hand  of  the  Commodore, 
and,  uncloaked  and  bareheaded,  went  out  into  the  storm. 
Brain  and  heart  were  afire ;  I  felt  no  cold.  In  a  fodder- 
stack  near  the  stable  I  had  made  on  the  leeward  side  a 
deep  hole  into  which  I  would  often  go  late  at  night  to 
watch  the  stars,  and  worry  my  poor  limited  mind,  until 
astronomy  became  a  numbing  pain.  I  laid  down  there 
awhile  and  looked  at  the  tree-arms  tossing  helplessly, 
and  the  tall  spectral  tops  of  the  pines  in  the  distant 
wood  bowed  in  submission  to  the  storm.  I  felt  the  piti- 
lessness  of  the  wind.  I  could  see  all  the  oceans  with  the 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  II5 

waves  tumbling  horizon  after  horizon  away,  the  world 
round,  and  I  felt  the  strength  and  the  unmercifulness  of 
water.  The  force  of  volcanoes  that  know  not  that  man- 
kind inhabit  the  world ;  the  throes  of  earthquakes  that 
swallow  cities  of  men,  women  and  children,  and  do  not 
consider,  but  go  on.  I  heard  the  rush  of  monstrous  fish 
under  the  waters,  the  crash  of  flesh-eating  beasts  through 
jungles,  the  faint,  slimy  sound  of  venomous  reptiles 
crawling  to  their  prey,  the  cracking  of  the  crunched 
bones  of  innocent  victims,  the  yells  and  cries,  never 
heard  by  man,  of  the  fighting  saurians  of  the  fore-world  ; 
I  felt  as  with  the  hand  the  remorseless  power  of  famines, 
and  listened  with  ears  other  than  mine  own  to  the  march 
of  pestilences  that  look  not  back  nor  remember.  Dis- 
eases took  shape,  and  in  hideous  personation  came  before 
me — cancer,  carbuncle,  fungus,  abscess,  deformities,  in- 
sanities, rheums,  neuralgias,  ulcers,  pains  unnamed  and 
innumerable — a  horrid  throng.  The  dolors  too  terrible 
to  be  told,  of  mind,  body  and  heart,  that  pious  men, 
guileless  women  and  sinless  children  suffer;  the  shame 
and  remorse  of  guilty  men ;  the  hardness,  worse  than 
shame  or  remorse,  of  those  who  feel  neither — all  came 
to  me,  all  the  misery  and  wickedness  of  this  perplexing 
world,  all  that  was  suffered  in  the  endless  past,  and  all 
that  is  to  be  endured  (and  for  what?)  in  the  endless 
future,  one  vast,  wide,  undivided,  solid,  black  mass  of 
ever-enduring  agony,  pressed  down  and  in  upon  me. 

I  rose  up.  This  was  too  much.  As  I  went  out  of  the 
stack,  the  thick,  ragged  clouds  that  had  been  hurrying  all 
night  long  to  some  rendezvous  on  the  other  side  of  the 
globe  fled  clear  away — the  crescent  moon,  white  and  cold, 
and  sharp  and  hard  as  a  saddler's  knife,  came  out  and  shed 
a  ghostly  light  on  the  scene.  The  wind  died  ;  the  trees 
stood  still ;  a  great  frost  set  in.  There  was  peace — the 
peace  of  frost — that,  too,  was  pitiless,  and  of  death.  I 
walked  to  the  horse-block,  and  sat  down.  Mine  hour 
was  come.  I  felt  it,  knew  it,  and  was  glad.  No  one 
ever  came  to  ride  my  horses.  The  side-saddle  and  sun- 
bonnet  were  unused,  had  never  been  used.  I  was  de- 
serted. The  fair,  fond  face  of  woman  had  been  blotted 
wholly  out  of  my  life,  almost  out  of  my  memory. 


U6  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

"So  much  motion  awhile  ago,"  said  I,  "and  now  so 
much  rest,  blessed  rest.  What  am  I  but  motion,  and 
why  not  now  cease,  be  not  no  more  forever,  and  mingle 
with  the  infinite  sources  of  motion  that  lie  among  the 
stars?" 

On  a  sudden  I  felt  the  earth  rise  up  out  of  its  orbit. 
The  movement  was  swift,  inconceivably  so,  but  not  hur- 
ried. By  a  finer  sense  than  sight  I  saw  that  the  stars 
were  not  falling,  but  that  I  was  going  up  to  them.  Their 
steely  fires  grew  brighter  momently,  and  presently  I  knew 
that  the  splendor  of  countless  flaming  suns  would  fall 
full  upon  me.  A  great  awe  and  expectation  came  over 
me.*  Just  then  I  heard  a  voice, — 


FOURTEENTH  INSTALLMENT. 

Aunt  Polly  Waddy — Cavalry  Comin' — Ned  Gregory,  Barren  Hope,  V. 
Dabney  and  others — Slugs  and  Gulgers — Col.  T.  F.  Owens — An  Old 
Virginia  Breakfast — The  Commodore  Breaks  Loose — A  Terrible  Time 
— Cremation — Loose  Again — Earthquakes,  Cholera,  etc. — Grand  Din- 
ner— Royal  Ashcake — Toasts,  Speeches,  and  Perfect  Bliss — Asleep  at 
His  Own  Table. 

"  LOOK  h'yer,  ole  marster,  ef  you  don't  git  off  dat 
hoss-block,  you  gwine  freeze  spang  to  it,  and  me  and 
little  Billy  will  have  to  come  and  prize  you  off  wid  a  crow- 
bar." 

It  was  the  voice  of  my  cook,  Aunt  Polly  Waddy,  the 


*  Awe  is  to  the  mind  somewhat  like  gravity  to  the  muscles,  the  weight 
of  the  incomprehensible.  The  inability  to  hold,  or  to  take  up,  oppresses, 
and  so  does  the  inability  to  take  in  or  understand.  A  ball  of  fire  some 
eight  hundred  thousand  miles  across,  like  the  sun,  might  well  impress  the- 
mind  with  a  sense  of  awe,  and  yet  it  is  but  a  ball  of  fire.  Once  under- 
stood, it  will  appear  what  it  really  is,  no  more  wonderful  than  the  flame 
of  the  commonest  hydrocarbon — that  of  a  tallow  dip,  for  example. 
Curious !  that  the  human  intellect,  measuring,  as  it  were,  the  universe, 
regards  solar  and  sidereal  systems  as  but  shining  motes,  and  yet  that 
same  intellect  is  awed  and  amazed  by  a  tall  mountain,  a  lofty  interior, 
or  a  high  tower,  like  my  Folly. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  U7 

last  slave-born  woman  living  in  America.     She  had  be- 
longed to  Colonel  Bondurant. 

"Go  away,  Aunt  Polly,"  said  I;  "I  am  concerned 
about  higher  matters  than  these  material  particles  you  call 
my  body — go  away." 

"I  won't  budge  a  inch  twell  you  git  up  from  dar.  I 
don't  want  to  hear  none  of  yo'  foolosophy  'bout  potticals 
— git  up  from  dar,  ole  marster;  don't  you  hear  me? 
You's  a  pritty  man — so  old  dat  yo'  bones  rattles  in  yo' 
skin  like  cinders  in  a  tin-pan — to  be  settin'  out  here  and 
de  frost  gethrin'  on  you  like  dried  rozum  on  a  pine  log — 
git  up  from  dar,  day's  breakin' — git  up.  Lemme  heist  you 
down." 

"Be  it  so,  Aunt  Polly,"  said  I,"  mournfully,  coming 
back  from  the  stars  with  great  anguish.  "But  what  have 
I  to  do  with  life?" 

"Monsus  little,"  was  her  reply;  "and  darfo  you  mout 
be  mo'  keerful." 

"  Heish !"  she  cried  suddenly;  "heish!  kelvery 
comin'." 

Sure  enough,  the  trampling  of  many  hoofs  was  heard 
in  the  distance.  A  squadron  of  imperial  cuirassiers  had 
gone  up  some  days  before  to  suppress  a  disturbance  at 
Concord  depot,  and  their  return  did  not  surprise  me. 
Presently  the  cavalcade  halted  under  the  gigantic  oaks 
that  shaded  the  road  in  front  of  my  house,  and  the  offi- 
cer in  command  saluted  me  in  a  strangely  quavering  voice. 

"Give  you  good-morrow,  fair  sir,"  said  he. 

"  Give  it  to  me,  then,"  I  replied  gruffly,  for  I  was  in  no 
humor  to  receive  visitors;  "give  it  to  me  and  pass  on—- 
this ain't  no  tavern." 

"Fur  de  Lord's  sake,  ole  marster,  don't  sen'  um  away. 
We's  had  no  comp'ny  fur  de  longist,  and  my  fingers  farly 
eeches  to  be  doin'  somethin'." 

"Methinks,  most  ancient  codger,"  said  the  officer, 
"that  your  lingo  is  even  more  unclassical  than  inhos- 
pitable." 

"Ned  Gregory,"  said  I,  "if  you  and  Jim  Hope  and 
the  rest  of  you  have  nothing  better  to  do  at  your  time  of 
death  (I  knew  they  were  all  dead),  you'd  better  go  back 
to  the  graves  where  you  belong." 


ITg  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

No  man,  no  living  man,  would  or  could  have  believed 
it;  but  besides  E.  S.  Gregory  and  James  Barron  Hope, 
there  were  Alex.  McDonald,  Jim  Booker,  Ham  Chamber- 
layne,*  V.  Dabney,  Gordon  McCabe,  Phil.  Haxall,  John 
Reeve,  Legh  Page,  Nathan  Clapp,  John  Meredith  and 
Mel.  Cardoza,  and  a  good  many  more,  some  twenty  in 
number,  all  on  horseback  except  Mel,  who  was  mounted 
upon  a  little  lame  Shetland  pony  with  big  black  eyes. 
All  had  beards,  white  as  the  driven  snow,  hanging  down 
to  their  waists,  except  Gordon  McCabe,  who  looked  to  be 
about  seventeen  years  of  age  till  you  got  close  to  him  and 
saw  that  there  were  at  least  ten  thousand  wrinkles  in  his 
face. 

"  Have  you  got  any  cold  sperrits?"  they  cried. 

"  Did  y'all  know  Woody  Latham?"  said  I. 

And  they  answered  and  said  they  did.  "We  desire 
some  pizen,"  they  added. 

"Did  y'all  know  Judge  Semple?"  said  I. 

They  answered  yes,  and  most  of  them  lied. 

"And  did  y'all  know  Jim  McDonald  and  Bob  Ridgway 
and  Chas.  Irving  and  Marcellus  Anderson  and  Philander 
McCorkle  and  Gallatin  Paxton  and  Bob  Glass  and  Gray 
and  Bob  Latham  and  Roger  A.  Pryor  and  Sam  Paul  and 
Joe  Mayo  and  A.  D.  Banks  and  Wm.  E.  Cameron  and 
George  and  Abe  Venable  and  Chas.  W.  Button  and  Billy 
Mosby  and  Nat  Meade  and  Geo.  Wedderburn  and  Nebu- 
chadnezzar and  Peter  Francisco  and  Dr.  Henry  C.  Alex- 
ander and  old  Mr.  Osborne  of  Petersburg  and  Melchisedek 
and  Mr.  J.  P.  Cowardin  and  Capt.  O'Bannon  and  Uncle 
Alex.  Moseley  and  Caesar  and  Maurice  and  Squire  of  the 
Whig  office  and  Heliogabalus  and  Bennett  of  the  Enquirer 
and  Peter  B.  Prentis  of  Nansemond  and  Col.  Walter 
Taylor  and  the  Dismal  Swamp  and  the  two  Barhams  of 
Petersburg  and  Dr.  Pleasants  and  the  fourth  book  of 
Euclid  and  Senator  Ro.  E.  Withers?" 

[In  the  original  MS.  the  list  embraces  the  names  of 
nearly  half  the  population,  male  and  female,  of  Lynch- 
burg,  Farmville,  Richmond,  Petersburg,  and  Norfolk,  a 

*  [A  clear  case  of  resurrection.  Chamberlayne  was  killed  in  battle  in 
the  third  or  fourth  installment.— Ed.  Whiff.} 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  H9 

large  number  of  heathen  gods,  and  old  Virginia  negroes 
of  good  families.] 

And  they  answered,  and  said  they  pintedly  did — which 
for  the  most  part  was  a  falsity  on  their  part. 

Then,  turning  to  my  handmaiden,  I  inquired: 

"Aunt  Polly,  can  you  cook  up  a  little  something  for 
these  gentlemen?" 

The  old  woman  was  a  Virginian  to  the  interior  of  her 
backbone.  Her  eyes  literally  flashed — 

"Cook!  Kin  I  cook?  for  dem  few?  I  kin  cook  for 
all creashun,  ef  you  gimme  de  lard." 

"Well,"  said  I,  "you've  had  the  keys  these  ten  years, 
and  I  reckon  you  ought  to  know  where  the  lard  is." 

The  old  woman  hurried  off,  overjoyed. 

I,  too,  was  overjoyed.  My  eyes  filled  with  tears  of  un- 
speakable thankfulness  for  the  gift  of  friendship  and  human 
sympathy  that  had  come  to  me  so  unexpectedly  on  the  very 
edge  of  life.  I  felt  that  I  could  live  ever  so  much  longer. 

"'Light,  'light,  you  blessed,  blessed,  blessed  old  hell- 
ions," I  cried  (no  such  relief  for  affection  as  an  oath-edged 
benediction),  "and  come  in." 

The  old,  half-frozen  fellows  scrabbled  down  from  their 
horses  as  quickly  as  they  could,  shook  me  warmly  by  the 
hand,  and  we  hurried  into  the  house,  for  it  was  very  cold. 

It  always  made  the  Commodore  mad  for  company  to 
come.  Scared  as  he  had  been  by  the  horror  that  was  in 
the  air  during  the  night,  he  was  not  half  so  scared  as  I  was 
lest  he  should  intrude  upon  my  guests;  but,  luckily  for  us 
all,  he  retired  in  the  sulks  to  his  room  and  there  remained. 
A  grand,  old-fashioned  fire  was  soon  set  going  in  the  wide 
hearth  of  the  dining-room — some  of  the  logs  were  rammed 
end-wise  up  the  chimney — and  we  began  to  warm  our 
shrivelled  hands;  but  before  we  could  get  comfortable  the 
demand  for  antifogmatics  became  vociferous. 

"Boys,"  said  I  (not  one  of  them  was  a  day  under  a 
hundred),  "boys,  I've  got  here  all  the  'heimers,  wassers, 
cognacs,  London  docks,  schnapps,  rums,  clarets,  sherries, 
madeiras,  S.  T.  1860  Xs,  treble  Xs,  stouts,  Bass's  and 
Bowler's  pale  ales,  lagers,  Kissingefls,  etc.,  etc.  ;  also  a 
barrel  or  two  of  Ned  Lafong's  Clemmer  and  a  few  runlets 
of  Bob  Burke's  choice  Hanger :  what  do  you  say?" 


120  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

"Whisky!     Whisky!"  unanimously. 

We  took  about  a  dozen  four-finger  slugs  apiece  and  at 
least  eight  bald-face  gulgers,  plumb  to  the  brim  every  pop. 
We  were  none  of  your  tender-gizzarded  spring  chickens ; 
besides,  the  weather  was  deucedly  cold. 

By  the  time  we  were  fairly  warmed  up  inside  and  out, 
Aunt  Polly  brought  in  breakfast. 

We  had  in  the  first  place  a  regular  old-time  Montrose 
loaf,  a  high  fellow,  like  a  Martello  tower.  Gordon  Mc- 
Cabe  got  as  mad  as  fire  because  he  couldn't  tip-toe  and 
shake  his  fist  over  it  in  the  face  of  Phil  Haxall — the  boys 
were  all  a  good  deal  excited.  Then  we  had  spare-ribs, 
broiled  ham  and  eggs,  beefsteak  and  onions,  corned  shad, 
and  chitlins  on  toast.  We  had  also  some  batter-bread, 
some  batter-cakes,  some  buckwheat  cakes,  some  flannel- 
cakes,  some  hominy,  some  turn-overs,  some  griddle-cakes, 
some  beat-biscuit,  some  muffins,  and  some  heavenly  waffles. 
Last,  but  not  least,  we  had  some  coffee,  some  open  fire- 
placed,  trivet-hotted  coffee,  just  such  coffee  as  Mrs.  Cham- 
berlayne's  Laura  used  to  make — coffee  that  goes  to  the 
soul — in  a  megatherial  pot. 

As  we  were  about  to  sit  down,  in  comes  Col.  Thomas 
F.  Owens,*  who  had  been  detained  all  night  at  Spout 
Spring.  He  was  received  with  a  feu  de  joie,  in  decidedly 
cracked  accents,  asked  a  Masonic  blessing,  and  we  all  fell 
to.  When  the  Arabian  elixir  began  to  penetrate  to  their 
remotest  capillaries,  and  the  gums  (there  wasn't  the  half 
of  a  tooth  in  the  whole  crowd)  of  these  old  cocks  began  to 
sink  through  the  crisp,  brown  crust  down  into  the  very 
marrow  of  the  hot  waffles,  they  sobbed  aloud  and  with  one 
voice  said,  "This,  this  is  Old  Virginia!" 

It  did  me  good  to  hear  them  say  so.  I  thought  so  my- 
self. 

Never  did  I  see  people  eat  so;  never  did  I  eat  so  in  all 
my  life.  It  was  eleven  o'clock  and  after  before  breakfast 
was  over. 

*  A  ruddy,  clean,  nicely-dressed,  always  good-natured,  always  cour- 
teous, obliging,  and  "excellent  well,  I  give  you  thanks'*  Aid-de-Camp 
to  Governor  Walker  of  the  1870-74  period.  If  Governor  Walker  had  run 
a  horse-shoe  magnet  smoothly  smack  round  the  world,  he  could  not  have 
attracted  a  better  man  for  the  6ffice  he  filled. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  I2i 

I  had  all  sorts  of  all  sorts  of  cigars  in  the  known  world ;  I 
had  every  named  pipe,  with  reed,  reed-root,  fig,  cherry,  and 
other  stems,  also  some  noble  cobs,  wrought  by  the  genius 
of  Franklin  Mosby  and  handed  down  to  me  by  Alexander 
Mosely,  together  with  a  lot  of  long  //-//  stems,  sloped 
off  at  the  tip  like  the  mouth-piece  of  a  clarionet.  We 
were  smoking  like  twenty  old  tar-kilns,  when  an  ominous 
rumbling  and  rattling  was  heard  upon  the  staircase.  My 
worst  fears  were  realized ;  it  was  the  Commodore,  freshly 
wound  up  and  in  a  perfect  frenzy  at  the  intrusion  of  my 
guests.  In  an  instant  I  had  locked  and  bolted  the  parlor 
door.  As  well  have  opposed  so  much  pasteboard  to  his 
progress;  he  smashed  the  door  down  with  a  single  blow, 
leaped  into  the  crowd  and  laid  about  him  with  the  staff 
of  old  Terrill,  of  Bath,  in  a  most  alarming  and  indeed 
dangerous  style.  The  rattling  of  that  staff  upon  our  old 
skulls  reminded  me  of  a  hogshead  full  of  gourds  rolling 
down  a  rocky  hill.  It  was  an  awful  state  of  affairs.  We 
were  twenty-one  in  all,  but  no  match  for  that  terrible  au- 
tomaton with  his  huge  stick;  black  eyes,  bloody  noses,  and 
skinned  sconces  became  the  order  of  the  day  in  less  than 
fifteen  minutes.  He  soon  cleared  out  the  parlor,  and  such 
a  chase  up-stairs  and  down- stairs  ensued  as  was  never  seen 
before.  Of  all  the  lively  old  men  that  ever  were  on  this 
planet  we  were  the  liveliest.  I  haven't  a  doubt  that  he 
would  have  killed  the  last  one  of  us  if  John  Meredith,  who 
had  learned  the  art  in  California,  had  not  blinded  him  by 
throwing  a  bed-quilt  over  his  head,  and  then  lassoed  him  ; 
after  which  it  was  comparatively  an  easy  matter  (not  such 
an  easy  matter  either,  for  he  fought  like  a  demon  to  the 
last)  to  bind  him  hand  and  foot.  What  to  do  with  him, 
was  then  the  question.  A  violent  discussion  followed. 
"To  destroy  such  a  marvelous  bit  of  mechanism  would 
be  a  sin  and  a  shame,"  said  some.  "We  will  have  no 
peace  of  our  lives — he  may  get  loose  at  any  moment — 
until  we  put  an  end  to  him,"  said  the  others.  After  two 
hours'  talk,  interspersed  with  numerous  nips,  it  was  put  to 
the  vote  and  decided  by  a  large  majority  to  burn  him. 
Accordingly,  he  was  doubled  up,  tied  with  plow-lines,  his 
feet  to  his  head  and  his  arms  around  his  legs,  and  thrown 
upon  the  great  brass  andirons  of  the  dining-room  fire-place, 


I22  WHAT  I  DID   WITH 

the  only  one  large  enough  to  receive  him.  We  ought  to 
have  known  better;  but,  what  with  the  various  gulgers, 
slugs  and  nips  that  we  had  taken,  we  did  not.  No  sooner 
were  the  plow-lines  burnt  through,  than  the  old  man  came 
out  of  the  fire-place  with  a  demoniac  bound  and  scream, 
scattering  the  coals  in  all  directions,  setting  the  house  on 
fire  in  a  dozen  different  places,  smashing  half  my  crockery 
(the  table  was  set  for  dinner)  and  playing  hob  generally. 
A  stampede  followed,  of  course.  Ham  Chamberlayne 
tripped  him  up,  seized  one  leg,  old  Kelley,  of  the  Fred- 
ericksburg  Herald,  seized  the  other,  and  away  they  both 
went  out  of  different  windows,  carrying  the  sashes  with 
them  and  landing  twenty  feet  out  in  the  yard.  The  Com- 
modore, leaping  after  them,  gave  chase  to  the  first  men 
he  saw,  who  chanced  to  be  Bishop  Gibbons  and  Dr.  Eras- 
mus Powell,  the  greatest  pile-ointmenter  of  the  age.  Off 
they  sped  through  the  well-house,  the  Commodore  not  two 
feet  behind  them.  Blind  with  rage,  the  Commodore 
missed  the  gate  (a  happy  circumstance),  and  smash  went 
the  well-house,  down  went  the  Commodore,  kicking  and 
fighting  as  he  fell,  knocking  out  the  stones  and  destroy- 
ing the  well  forever  but  entombing  himself  at  the  same 
time.  He  kept  kicking,  though,  and  at  last  accounts  was 
gradually  working  his  way  through  to  the  other  side  of 
the  earth,  producing  earthquakes,  eclipses,  tidal-waves, 
and  Asiatic  cholera  at  various  points  as  he  went  along.* 

Order  was  soon  restored,  and  dinner  was  served  without 
delay,  for  the  sun  was  setting,  and  we  were  as  hungry  as 
silkworms.  As  I  entered  the  dining-room  that  capital 
major-domo,  Charley  B.  Oliver,  came  in  with  a  big  bowl 
of  superb  egg-nog.  John  Dabney,  through  another  door, 
brought  a  bowl  of  apple-toddy  (Tom  Wynne's  pattern), 
and  Gerot  followed  with  some  other  delicious  mixed 
French  something  or  other.  In  one  corner  Bishop  Cum- 
mings  and  Mr.  Latane  were  discussing  pedobaptism  with 
Innes  Randolph  and  Jimmy  Pegram  (Jim  was  fat),  while 
in  the  other  Mr.  Sprigg  and  Dr.  Staples  were  presenting 


*  The  terrestrial  eructations  at  Bald  Mountain  immediately  after  this 
event  were  peculiarly  severe,  distilling  ceased,  and  many  Hard-shell,  Tar- 
heel souls  were  saved  for  a  few  days,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  permanently. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS.  12$ 

copies  of  the  Bible  to  T.  W.  McMahon  and  Horace 
Greeley.  Just  then  Mosby,  Wirt  Harrison,  Lorentz  and 
Kellam,  of  the  Auditor's  office,  came  in  with  four  or  five 
scuttles  (they  were  sweet  and  clean)  of  smoking  Tom  and 
Jerry,  Dr.  Bastian,  Huxley,  and  J.  C.  Southall,  protested 
that  a  cold  protoplasmic  smash  was  the  thing,  and  Lub- 
bock  (Sir  John),  a  little  tipsy  I  thought,  called  vocifer- 
ously for  a  prehistoric  stone-fence,  but  their-roices  were 
lost  in  the  general  uproar  of  talk.  People  continued  to 
come ;  some  I  knew  intimately,  others  not  so  well,  but  all 
were  warmly  welcomed.  I  could  hear  the  clatter  of  the 
swingletrees  and  the  clink  of  the  trace-chains  of  arriving 
vehicles  on  all  sides  of  the  yard. 

It  was  a  dinner  indeed — such  a  dinner — Aunt  Polly's 
supreme  triumph.  We  had  a  Royal  Bengal  ashcake,  as 
big  as  the  head  of  a  flour-barrel,  no  collard  leaf  about  it, 
the  print  of  the  cook's  fingers  still  there,  and  a  few  cin- 
ders clinging  to  the  crust  in  spite  of  careful  washing.  We 
had  a  sublime  turkey  and  a  ham  that  quieted  all  longings 
for  immortality — all  present  longings,  I  mean.  We  had 
some  pot-liquor  with  dumplings,  a  cotopaxic  Brunswick 
stew,  vegetables  of  various  degrees,  'coon  cutlets,  some 
bread — also  forks — some  eggs,  many  numerous  eggs — and 
knives — some  eggs,  and  a  joint  of  conic  sections  gar- 
nished with  Greek  roots,  for  the  benefit  of  Harry  Estell 
and  Tom  Price — and  eggs,  plenty  of  knives  and  gravy — 
with  the  fif -finest  wuh,  wuh,  wuh-ine,  wine  (I  said  wine) 
sent  me  from  Oscar  Jones's  by  Cha' — Charles  Cranz — and 
eggs. 

A  fine — good — elegant — fuf ' — fine  dinner. 

I  sat  at  the  foot  of  the  table,  with  my  cousin  Billy 
Twins  (when  did  he  come?)  and  George  Eliot  on  my 
right,  and  E.  S.  Gregory  and  Bill  M.  Thackeray  on  my 
left.  Herbert  Spencer  sat  at  the  head,  with  Tarquin  the 
Proud  on  one  side  and  George  Dabney  Woolen  on  the 
other — a  supp'-lendid  comp'ny.  I  could  hear  the  swin- 
gletrees of  more  a  coming,  and  I  was  glad.  I  had  plenty. 

They  toasted  me.  Everybody  was  kind,  and  toasted. 
"  Dear,  good,  generous  old  Moses — we'll  never  leave  you 
— we  wo-won't  go  ho'." 

My  dry  old  heart  was  suffused  with  bliss.     At  last  I  had 


124 


WHAT  I  DID   WITH 


what  I  wanted — love,  affection,  good  fellowship,  people 
that  really  cared  for  me  and  enjoyed  being  with  me.  I 
was  very  happy. 

I  stood  up  to  reply.  The  last  rays  of  the  setting  sun 
shone  through  the  windows  (we  had  pasted  foolscap  over 
the  broken  panes)  and  shed  a  glory  over  the  scene.  The 
room  was  warm  and  rather  close — too  much  wood  on  the 
fire.  I  stood  up  to  respond.  They  were  all  dead  men — 
they  could  not  fool  me — and  if  there  was  one  thing  I 
wanted  to  see  in  this  world  more  than  another  it  was  a 
dead  man,  and  here  they  were  by  the  score,  and  more 
coming,  kept  coming.  I  could  hear  my  big  gate  slam- 
ming as  they  drove  through. 

And  they  all  looked  at  me  with  the  look  I  had  seen  in 
the  eyes  of  the  friends  of  my  childhood,  and  they  had 
promised  to  stay  with  me  and  look  at  me  that  way  all  the 
time.  It  was  great  joy,  exceeding  great.  I  stood  up  to 
second  the — to  reply.  I  was  in  heaven,  a  lowly  corner  or 
sub-cellar  of  heaven  it  was  true,  but  delightful,  and  I 
knew  that  when  this  foolishness  was  past,  friends  still 
nearer  and  dearer,  male  and  female,  were  close  at  hand 
without,  waiting  to  welcome  me.  I  was  so  happy. 

As  I  rose  up  to  reply  and  looked  into  the  beaming  and 
affectionate  eyes  of  my  friends,  a  rosy  mist  filled  the 
room,  the  table  (Spiro  Zetelle,  sitting  on  a  piano-stool  in 
the  middle  in  place  of  the  pyramid  of  candied  oranges, 
directed  the  feast  with  a  silver-mounted  baton  borrowed 
from  Ambold)  the  table  stretched  out,  Herbert  Spencer 
and  Dabney  Wooton  receded  in  the  dim  sweet  distance, 
I  could  hear  my  muffled  voice  following  them  as  they  van- 
ished— and — I  pledge  you  my  word  (as  William  Waller 
used  to  say  in  Lynchburg,  with  his  coat  sleeves  pushed 
back  and  showing  his  cuffs)  I  pledge  you  my  word,  I  went 
fast  asleep  standing  up  at  my  own  table  ! 

[Poor  old  Moses !  Tight  is  not  the  word — it  is  too 
harsh — much  too  harsh. — Ed.  Whig.'} 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


FIFTEENTH   INSTALLMENT. 

In  Gordonsville — Grand  Triangular  Bob  Sully  Hotel — Fried  Chicken 
and  Hard-boiled  Eggs  in  Effigy — Vast  Gongs — Stofers,  Frys,  Scotts, 
Chapmans,  Kincheloes,  etc. — The  Sphynx — Adams  a  Nuisance — Sent 
to  Poor-House — Death — Burial  and  Obituary — The  End. 

WHEN  I  came  to  myself  I  was  in  Gordonsville.  How  I 
got  there  nobody  would  ever  tell  me.  I  had  done  a  great 
deal  for  that  place.  By  paring  down  Smith's  mountain  I 
managed  to  elevate  the  general  level  of  the  town,  so  that 
a  man  could  go  down  into  his  cellar  to  get  his  little  frosted 
turnip  and  his  little  withered  carrot  without  wading  up  to 
his  neck  in  water.  Whereupon  the  place  grew  wonder- 
fully. I  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  streets  stretch 
out  almost  to  Mr.  Haxall's,  and  a  succession  of  palatial 
stores  with  large  pane  windows  and  occupied  by  a  relay 
of  solid  firms  of  Brotherton,  Bros.  &  Bro.,  Cousinton, 
Cousins  &  Co.,  Nephewson,  Nephews  &  No.  (abb.  for 
nobody  else),  all  disposing  of  full  lines  of  goods,  bads, 
and  indifferents  to  the  people  of  Madison  and  Greene. 
Also,  there  was  a  tobacco  factory  and  a  patent  plow- 
helve-handle  studio.  I  fitted  up  the  railroad  junction  or 
Y,  and  erected  thereupon  a  mighty  triangular  hotel,  cover- 
ing the  whole  space  of  the  Y  and  twelve  stories  high,  with 
four  mansard  roofs,  and  surmounted  by  a  tower  higher 
than  that  of  the  Tribune  building,  on  the  top  of  which 
stood  a  prodigious  figure  of  Mercury,  like  that  on  the 
custom-house  at  Venice,  resting  on  tip-toe,  holding  a 
big  hard-boiled  egg  in  one  hand  and  a  huge  fried  chicken- 
leg  in  the  other.  It  was  an  interesting  tower,  and  was 
noticed  *a  good  deal.  People  came  up  from  the  Pizen- 
feels  in  ox-carts  and  on  water  barrels,  in  sledges  drawn  by 
fiercely  tail-twisted  and  pepper-podded  yearlings,  and 
camped  over  against  it  to  admire  it. 

From  Green  Springs,  from  far  Cobham,  from  distant 
Pittsylvania,  and  remote  Fluvanna  came  wanderers,  who 
stayed  till  the  indolentest  flies  built  webs  in  their  gaping 


I26  WHAT  I  DID  WITH 

mouths.  In  junks,  dug-outs,  and  double  canoes  many 
Chinese  and  Cannibals  arrived  to  enjoy  the  grandeur  and 
repose  of  the  Bob  Sully  hotel,  as  it  was  called.  South 
Americans  sailed  up  from  the  tops  of  the  Andes  on  the 
backs  of  condors,  fifteen  feet  from  tip  to  tip.  Pardigon 
came  up  on  a  fresh  bicycle  or  velocipede  without  drawing 
rein  or  halting  for  water.  It  was  so  large  a  house  that 
the  three  sides  had  to  be  kept  by  three  different  people. 
Tip  Jennings  kept  one  side,  Snowden  Yates  kept  the  other, 
and  Colonel  C.  T.  Crittenden  kept  the  third.  The 
rivalry  was  so  great  that  they  had  to  be  kept  well,  and 
they  were  kept  well,  yea,  splendidly.  Lovers  of  good 
eating  and  good  drinking  (Jimmy  Keagy  had  three  bar- 
rooms on  each  side,  or  nine  in  all,  and  all  large)  rushed 
from  every  car  to  get  a  meal  there.  The  roar  of  trains 
and  the  shriek  of  locomotives  never  ceased  day  or  night. 
Each  landlord  kept  a  gong  twelve  feet  in  diameter  and 
run  by  steam  going  all  the  time.  This  excited  the  atmos- 
phere and  refreshed  the  arriving  passengers.  Many  of 
the  largest  negroes  amiably  solicited  your  patronage  and 
praised  his  side  of  the  triangle.  Digges  had  forty  odd 
wheat  fans  which  blew  out  his  land  circulars  by  the  one 
hundred  thousand.  Gordonsville  was  a  lively  place.  A 
great  many  people  came  there  to  get  something  good  to 
eat.  The  Sphynx  got  up  out  of  the  sand,  flirted  farewell 
with  her  tail  to  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops,  crossed  the  seas, 
landed  at  Only  near  Onancock,  inquired  for  Henry  A. 
Wise,  waded  Chesapeake  bay,  cut  her  feet  with  oyster 
shells,  came  up  to  Gordonsville  by  way  of  Centre-Cross 
and  Milford  on  four  stilts,  called  for  two  dozen  griddled 
riddles,  couldn't  get  them,  died  of  inanition,  died  on  the 
platform  near  the  ticket  office,  was  quarried  on  the  spot 
and  her  remains  turned  into  a  poor-house. 

I  was  absolutely  penniless,*  but  a  descendant  of  Fatty 

*  A  great  change  had  come  to  pass.  The  earth  had  passed  through 
the  tail  of  Dill's  comet  (discovered  by  Mr.  Joseph  Dill,  tobacco  manu- 
facturer and  astronomer  of  Richmond),  producing  strange  effects.  Among 
others,  the  appetite  for  stimulants  and  narcotics  of  every  kind  had  been 
absolutely  destroyed — men  drank  water  only,  and  the  need  of  most  medi- 
cines ceased.  A  terrible  shrinkage  in  values  followed,  involving  the  finan- 
cial world  in  the  greatest  disasters.  My  investments  were  in  opium 
plantations  in  India.  Of  course  I  was  irretrievably  ruined. 


MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 


127 


Dunn  generously  took  care  of  me.  From  side  to  side  of 
the  triangular  hotel  I  pottered  with  my  cane  from  early 
dawn  till  dark,  worrying  everybody  by  telling  what  I  had 
done  for  Virginia,  and  especially  for  the  County  of  Orange. 
Being  a  small  and  very  pretty  county,  I  had,  at  not  very 
great  cost,  made  throughout  its  length  and  breadth  a  per- 
fect system  of  macadamized  roads,  so  admirably  built  that 
for  very  many  years,  indeed  up  to  the  time  of  my  death, 
they  did  not  need  one  dollar's  worth  of  repairs.  Popula- 
tion flowed  in  immediately,  the  major  part  of  the  new- 
comers being  men  of  wealth  from  England  and  the  North, 
who  filled  the  whole  county  with  most  beautiful  residences. 
Every  farm  was  a  picture,  every  turn  of  the  landscape  a 
delight.  All  of  my  friends  joined  Tom  Wallace  in  land 
speculation,  and  prospered  immensely.  Their  families 
increased.  There  were  Burgesses  on  every  hill-top,  A.  F. 
Stofers  in  every  valley,  a  profusion  of  Phil  Frys  and  Phil 
Barbours,  a  world  of  William  Henry  Chapmans,  cords  of 
W.  W.  and  Wick  Scotts,  Abe  Houseworths  in  abundance, 
Kincheloes  in  quantity,  and  Eckloffs  without  end ;  say 
nothing  of  all  the  other  families,  especially  Dr.  Grymes's 
and  Mrs.  Bull's.  And  yet  none  of  these  people  would 
believe  that  I  had  ever  lifted  a  finger  for  Virginia  or 
Orange  County.  They  did  not  so  much  as  know  my 
name — had  never  heard  of  me.  At  last  I  became  such  a 
nuisance  on  the  platform,  button-holed  people  so  and 
spluttered  in  their  faces  so  that  they  sent  me  to  the  poor- 
house,  and  put  me  in  the  care  of  a  bad-tempered  old 
pauper  woman,  who  abused  me,  and  scratched  me  until 
my  face  resembled  the  old  American  flag  at  half-mast  in  a 
calm.  And  there  one  day  I  died  of  a  surfeit  of  cornfield 
peas. 

The  only  notice  made  of  me  in  the  Gordonsville  Gazette, 
edited  by  Drinkard,*  was  this: 

"Moses  Adams,  a  pauper,  died  at  the  poor-house  yes- 
terday soon  after  dinner.  He  was  very  old — said  to  be 
upwards  of  one  hundred — and  labored  under  the  delusion 

*  Great  grandson  of  W.  F.  Drinkard,  a  powerful  and  uncompassionate 
etymological,  meteorological  Richmond  Dispatchist  of  a  long  previous 
period. 


J28      WHAT  I  DID   WITH  MY  FIFTY  MILLIONS. 

that  he  had  been  enormously  rich.     His  knowledge  of 
grammar  was  defective." 

At  my  request  they  buried  me  in  the  middle  of  the  road. 
It  was  a  good  road,  and  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
that  every  day  some  jolly  party  would  pass  over  my  head 
on  the  way  to  a  good  eating-place — the  place  they  call 
Phil  Jones's. 


THE    END. 


POPULAR  WORKS 


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fascination.  It  must  be  said,  too,  that 
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author." — Philadelphia  Age, 


By  Jennie  Woodville* 


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"We  predict   for  it  a  large  sale  in 


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which  we  ourselves  have  found  capti- 
vating  enough  to  burn  the  midnight 
over."  —  Philadelphia    Evening 


this  section,  and  anticipate  that  it  will 
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public  of  the  whole  country." — Lynch- 
burg  Republican. 


Bulletin, 

Was  She  Engaged?     A  Novel.      By  "  Jonquil" 

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mass  of  so-called  novels.  There  is  not 
•  partide  of  rant  from  cover  to  cover. 


No  passion  is  'torn  to  tatters.*  No 
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the  more  energetic  but  less  poetical 
Rosamond  ;  the  sunlight  and  shadow 
of  these  two,  enhanced  by  the  dark 
and  designing  character  of  Sarah, 
combine  to  produce  prominent  impres- 
sions."— Philadelphia  Press. 

''  Every  one  seems  to  be  going  for 
'Was  She  Engaged.' "— Bptton  Satttr* 
day  Evening  Gazette. 


Lost  and  Saved.    A  Novel.    By  Hon.  Mrs.  Norton. 

New  Edition.     I2mo.     Cloth.     $1.25. 

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A     000  046  708     4 


H.  E.  H. 

DUPL 


